Bush to propose new ties for NATO

[Ron Burgundy]

AP - President Bush plans to propose an expanded partnership with NATO for five countries including Japan, Australia and South Korea at a summit of the alliance next week in Latvia.

WASHINGTON - President Bush plans to propose an expanded partnership with NATO for five countries including Japan, Australia and South Korea at a summit of the alliance next week in Latvia.

But NATO will not be expanded at this year's summit beyond its 26 present member countries, said officials at the White House and the State Department.

Bush will also renew his push at the gathering in Riga, the capital of Latvia, for NATO members to raise their levels of defense spending, particularly for the Afghanistan mission, Judy Ansley, a White House National Security Council Official, told reporters Tuesday.

The Afghanistan conflict has intensified in recent weeks, particularly in southern Afghanistan, with a resurgent Taliban and a central government struggling to assert authority.

The president will talk to other NATO leaders about the importance of supporting the mission in Afghanistan, Ansley, the NSC's director of Eastern European Affairs, told reporters in a conference call.

"This is the first real large out-of-area operation NATO has ever taken on. And it's an important operation. We have all 26 allies committed to it, and we just need to see it through," she said.

There are roughly 30,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan. However, some of the troops are restricted by their own governments in terms of what they can do, restrictions the United States is seeking to ease.

Under a new global partnership plan, Japan, Australia, South Korea, Sweden and Finland would be invited to increase their participation in training and meetings with the NATO alliance, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said at a State Department news conference.

"These five countries — at least the three Asian countries, I should say, Australia, Japan and South Korea — do not seek NATO membership," Burns said. "But we seek a partnership with them so that we can train more intensively, from a military point of view, and grow closer to them because we are deployed with them."

"This will be a priority issue for the United States at this summit, and we believe NATO will agree to this program of global partnerships," Burns said.

Australia already is the biggest non-NATO contributor to the alliance-led force in Afghanistan.

Six Arab countries are partners with NATO, as is Israel.

While NATO was initially formed to deter the Soviet Union in Europe, "Our agenda with Europe is now a global agenda," Burns said.

Earlier, at a separate meeting with reporters, Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried said no new membership invitations would be issued at the summit in Riga.

"This is not going to be an expansion summit," Fried said. "NATO is not going to be making invitations."

Macedonia, Croatia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Georgia are among countries in two groups that aspire to membership.

Fried paid tribute to the Netherlands, Canada and the United Kingdom for joining U.S. troops in fighting against a Taliban insurgency in southern Afghanistan. Fried urged NATO countries that do not authorize sending their troops into combat to change their positions. He did not name those countries.

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Associated Press diplomatic writer Barry Schweid contributed to this report.