Global Policy Forum

By Michael R. Gordon

In a move that would broaden its traditional role, NATO has offered to carry out the planning for a Turkish-led peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan, NATO's secretary general, Lord Robertson, said today.

The NATO offer is intended to encourage Turkey to take over command of the international peacekeeping force in Kabul from the British in June.

The offer also marks something of a departure for the Western alliance. It would enlist planners at NATO's military headquarters to help with an operation that would take place far from the alliance's traditional zone of responsibility and which would not be under the alliance's command.

''This is very much on the table,'' Lord Robertson said of the offer.

The reason for the offer is clear: assembling and managing an international force is a complex task, one that Britain and a handful of other European nations can manage. It involves identifying the precise forces that are needed from an array of nations and determining when and where they should be deployed.

But the task is a relatively routine one for Shape, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, which is the formal name of NATO's military headquarters at Mons, Belgium. Turkey, a NATO member, is considering the offer but not has not yet formally requested help with the planning.

''The offer of help from Shape in terms of force generation and force planning is very much something that could be quite alive in the next few weeks,'' Lord Robertson said. ''This is part and parcel of the work Shape does all the time.''

The offer is just part of a broader effort by NATO to make itself more relevant in the campaign against terrorism. Today, Lord Robertson sought to make the case the Western alliance had an important role to play to fighting terrorism. The NATO chief said that the alliance had been making a direct contribution by breaking up Al Qaeda terrorist cells in the Balkans and had dispatched its early warning Awacs planes to patrol American skies.

More generally, Lord Robertson argued that the alliance had indirectly helped the American counterterrorism campaign by defusing the crisis in Macedonia, and thus averting a broader conflict in the Balkans that might have distracted Washington as it was taking on the Taliban. NATO, he asserted, also made it easier for European nations and the United States to work together in Afghanistan.

''It is no coincidence that America's military partners in Afghanistan are overwhelmingly its NATO allies,'' Lord Robertson said in a speech today to the Council on Foreign Relations. ''This coalition can only work together because of decades of practical cooperation in NATO.''

Still, to be effective, NATO must close the gap between United States and European military capabilities. Lord Robertson has warned the Europeans that they risk becoming ''military pygmies'' unless they step up their military spending.

For the Europeans, the critical shortfalls include airlift, stocks of precision-guided munitions and the capability of air-to-air refueling.

European airlift capabilities are so limited that when European troops were deployed as peacekeepers to Afghanistan, many arrived on rented Russian and Ukrainian transport planes, Lord Robertson noted.

These deficiencies are well known and have long been identified by NATO.

Lord Robertson, however, is promoting a new approach, which would be taken up by heads of state in November, when NATO members gather in Prague to take up the issue of expanding the alliance.

''I hope to have something on the table at Prague where the decision will need to be taken,'' he told reporters today. ''Not a general political commitment to increase expenditure, but a genuine precise, timed commitment to acquire the missing capability. That is the only way in which the Europeans are not going to be increasingly marginalized.''

Regarding aircraft, for example, Lord Robertson said that one way for Europeans nations to fill an immediate shortfall would be to lease American C-17 transport planes until the European-made A-400 transport planes are purchased in sufficient numbers. The NATO secretary general also said the United States should relax controls on the transfer of military technology to Europe and on defense industry partnerships with European companies.

''It shows imagination on the part of the allies,'' one Western diplomat said of the plan to offer help to the Turks. ''NATO doesn't have to choose between running the mission itself or doing nothing.

''There are other things it can do.''