Obama heads to NATO summit

US President Barack Obama travels to France and Germany for a NATO summit to mark the alliance's 60th anniversary that is set to be dominated by its mission in Afghanistan.

Leaving London after a high-stakes G20 summit on dragging the world economy out its worst recession for generations, Air Force One is due in the French city of Strasbourg on Friday morning.

There Obama is scheduled to hold closed door talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy -- while their wives Michelle and Carla get to know one another -- before popping over the border to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The first one-on-one meetings with the French and German leaders will give Obama a chance to turn the page on relations strained since Paris and Berlin opposed the US-led invasion of Iraq launched by his predecessor George W. Bush in 2003

Demonstrations broke out on the eve of the summit Thursday, with French police arresting 100 protestors in clashes that broke out as masked activists tried to march on Strasbourg city centre.

Protesters used wooden stakes to smash bus stands and street furnishings.

The summit gets underway Friday evening in the German town of Baden-Baden with a concert to mark the Alliance's 60th anniversary, followed by a dinner.

NATO, the world's most powerful military alliance, was formed in 1949 as a counterweight to the Soviet Union, Washington's Cold War foe, and the countries that became the Warsaw Pact six years later.

NATO won this war almost two decades ago without firing a shot, and since then the military alliance has grown to 28 members including countries that were once under Kremlin domination.

But NATO leaders will be mixing the celebrations with discussions of the challenges that now face the alliance.

When they hold their formal meeting on Saturday first and foremost on the agenda with be NATO's mission in Afghanistan, where 70,000 troops -- mostly under NATO command -- are battling a tenacious Taliban insurgency.

The source of 90 percent of the world's heroin, Afghanistan and the lawless tribal territories of Pakistan across the border remain the prime breeding ground for militants prepared to launch attacks across the world.

Obama will use the summit to showcase his new Afghan war plan and enlist support from sometimes sceptical NATO allies for a bold new effort to crush Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Officials bill Obama's escalation of the war, largely using thousands of extra US troops, as a key test of the alliance's capacity to expand into civilian support roles and to meet the test of the new post Cold-War era.

The United States has pressed its NATO allies for more troops and broader operating criteria for combat missions in Afghanistan for months, including during the former administration of George W. Bush.

Barack Obama's national security adviser predicted NATO allies will send extra troops to Afghanistan.

"It would be wrong to conclude that we will not get any contributions, either manpower or resources, because I think that's not going to be the case," General James Jones said in a conference call Thursday with reporters from the G20 summit in London.

And to confront new security realities, NATO's outgoing secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer has prepared a text to start the process of drafting an updated vision for the 21st century -- a "strategic concept".





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