NATO scales down plans for rapid reaction force
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NOORDWIJK, Netherlands  - NATO defense ministers agreed on Thursday to scale down the alliance's ambition to keep a 25,000-strong rapid reaction force on standby, ready to intervene in crises around the world.
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The NATO mission in Afghanistan threatens a rift between nations willing to participate in combat operations and those that are not.
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The British government said Wednesday that it had reduced the level of the terrorist threat facing the country from "critical" to "severe."
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Over the past six weeks, the Taliban have driven government forces out of roughly half of a strategic area that American and NATO officials declared a success story last fall.
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NATO defense ministers will on   Thursday examine a military proposal that will allow the   alliance to rapidly complete its plans to take over command of   all peacekeepers in Afghanistan, NATO officials said.
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Defense chiefs from NATO's 26 nations  agreed on Saturday they needed more troops and fewer  limitations on the use of their forces to step up the fight  against insurgents in the violent south of Afghanistan.
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Shifting tactics, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday that the Bush administration has decided to tone down its appeals to NATO allies for more troops and other aid in the fight against the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.
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Western nations softened a draft  resolution to back U.N. plans for a future Kosovo state, but  Russia dismissed the move on Thursday and renewed its threat of  a veto unless there were radical changes.
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The Russian military will cut its deployment in Chechnya by about 1,000 troops and stop using conscripts in the war against separatist rebels next year, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Friday.
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Russia suspended its participation in a key pact limiting military forces in Europe on Saturday, amid deteriorating relations with the West on a range of fronts.
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A suspected plan to torture and behead a soldier appeared to be a tactical shift from plots to cause mass fatalities.
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The United States urged NATO on Wednesday to produce plans to take control of all military operations in Afghanistan, possibly from next year, in a call which spooked some of its alliance partners.
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Russia has suspended its participation in a key pact limiting conventional forces in Europe through a decree signed by President Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin said in a statement on Saturday.
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Almost three years to the day after it took command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), NATO takes charge of security operations from the US-led coalition, which forced out the fundamentalist Taliban regime.
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NATO defense ministers will review procedures in Afghanistan on Thursday as part of efforts to halt a wave of civilian casualties threatening to undermine public support for foreign peacekeepers there.
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Japan took a significant step away from the pacifism enshrined in its constitution yesterday when it announced new defence guidelines for the first time in nearly a decade.
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In an unprecedented departure from  NATO practice, several alliance members will not allow their  own officers assigned to NATO's two command centers to  participate in its first collective postwar mission in Iraq, a  senior U.S. official said on Friday.