The head of NATO has sought "a stronger, (and a) more inclusive security coalition" that includes countries like India, China and Russia to tackle terrorism in Afghanistan in view of the alliance's troubled mission in the war-ravaged and land-locked south-west Asian nation.
Anders Fogh Rasmussen was referring to the fact that NATO was a cold-war-era creature to prevent the take-over of Western Europe by the then Soviet Union.
Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, Rasmussen said Sunday that a key lesson of the alliance's woes in Afghanistan was that NATO "needs an entirely new compact between all the actors on the security stage."
"India has a stake in Afghan stability. China too. And both could help further develop and rebuild Afghanistan. The same goes for Russia. Basically, Russia shares our security concerns," he said, adding all these countries had interests in the stability of Afghanistan, and could do more to help develop and assist the land-locked country.
Rasmussen added that NATO should become the "hub of a broad global security coalition and a center for consultations" on such international security issues, including terrorism, cyber attacks, nuclear proliferation, piracy and climate-change.
In an age of global insecurity, the threats to Europe and North America, including terrorism, cyber attacks, energy cut-offs, piracy and climate-change, were coming from far beyond NATO borders, he said.
"Against such threats, the approaches of a bygone era simply no longer work. Static, heavy metal armies are not going to impress terrorists, pirates or computer hackers," he added.
Rasmussen's call came as thousands of NATO and Afghan troops are poised to launch one of the biggest offensives of the eight-year-old Afghan war in the southern part of that country to wrest backin He Marjah lmand province, a key Taliban stronghold and center of opium-trafficking.
It will be the first major operation by American-led coalition forces since U.S. President Barack Obama ordered 30,000 extra troops to Afghanistan to counter Taliban resurgence.
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