NATO chief wants more effort in Afghanistan

Afghanistan is the most complex challenge NATO has ever undertaken, but the alliance must remain engaged there to prevent the country turning back into an al-Qaeda training ground, the organization's top official said Thursday.

Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that some critics are starting to say that the cost of engagement in the eight-year-old war is too high, but he countered that "the cost of inaction would be far higher."

"Leaving Afghanistan behind would once again turn the country into a training ground for al-Qaeda. The pressure on nuclear-armed Pakistan would be tremendous," Rasmussen said in a speech at a security conference in Bratislava ahead of a meeting of NATO defence ministers.

"Instability would spread throughout central Asia and it would only be a matter of time until we here in Europe would feel the consequences of all of this."

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, has called for more troops, and Fogh Rasmussensaid Thursday that he hopes NATO memberswill endorse that recommendation.

Rasmussen is also pushing formore co-operation between NATO and Russia. He saidhe would also like to seeMoscow become more engaged in Afghanistan, where a resurgent Taliban has been making gains.

Russia has given some support to the international anti-terrorism campaign in Afghanistan, allowing transports over its territory, for instance.

While Moscow is worried about the spread of Islamic extremism in Central Asia, it has nonetheless refused to contribute troops or aircraft to the NATO mission.

Moscow itself was involved in a devastating war in Afghanistan in the 1980s that left 15,000 Soviet soldiers dead and proved a humiliating defeat for the Soviet superpower.

The Taliban came to power in 1996, shortly after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan.