TT - NATO: summit will put the French back on the road to full NATO membership - je 02.04.2008,17h

Welcome back ... Summit meetings are often criticised for being empty junkets for international leaders that often only lead to bland comminiques. Well, that is unlikely to be the case when it comes to the NATO summit that's now getting underway in Bucharest. Conflicting positions are held by key players on at least two hot issues. One of them is Afghanistan, where the US has now surprisingly backed down from calls for Germany to send troops to the volatile south of the country. But Washington is still determined to get NATO to do more to battle the Taliban. France is an important player here. The summit will, after all, put the French back on the road to full NATO membership .. and Paris is signalling its willingness to send a 1,000 new troops to Afghanistan.