Nato

When the White House sent a last-minute invitation for Asif Ali Zardari to attend the two-day NATO summit, they were taking a highly public gamble. Would sharing the spotlight with President Obama and other global leaders induce the Pakistani president to allow vital supplies to reach alliance troops fighting in Afghanistan? But long before the summit ended Monday, the answer was clear: No deal. Zardari's refusal to reopen the supply routes left a diplomatic blot on a summit that NATO sought to cast as the beginning of the end of the conflict in Afghanistan.

CHICAGO - As thousands of protesters marched in the streets, President Obama welcomed more than 60 world leaders to his heavily guarded hometown for a NATO summit that will start the clock for America and its allies to begin pulling combat troops from Afghanistan. The two-day summit, the largest in the 63-year history of the military alliance, came as White House officials made it clear they were furious overPakistan's continued refusal to reopen ground routes used to move fuel and other war supplies into Afghanistan, a six-month standoff that the White House had hoped to resolve before Obama arrived in Chicago.

So how many omega-3 fatty acids are enough — and how should you get them? That likely depends on your age and your specific health concerns. The United States does not yet have guidelines for DHA or EPA, and consensus among nutrition experts is elusive. But specialty groups, some governmental agencies and individual experts have started to take a stand. For healthy adults without major medical issues, the European Food Safety Agency recommends a daily dose of 250 milligrams of combined EPA and DHA, while the National Heart Foundation of Australia suggests 500 milligrams.

WASHINGTON - Whatever else they achieve, back-to-back summits of world leaders this weekend hosted by President Obama will showcase the perks of incumbency. An American president with sagging approval ratings on the top campaign issue - the anemic economic recovery - will stand in the spotlight as a seasoned world leader. On Friday, Obama welcomed leaders of the major industrialized nations, the so-called G-8, for an overnight economic gathering at Camp David, the presidential retreat in western Maryland.

The Palestinian bid for statehood and traffic congestion weren't the only things going on in New York last week as the 66th U.N. General Assembly convened. One of the issues privately discussed by foreign ministers at the United Nations was the "responsibility to protect," or R2P. This concept was central to the U.N. mandate to protect civilians in Libya, which led to NATO's aerial involvement there. As the dust settles in Tripoli, it has become necessary to refute a powerful myth that has developed among some pundits and politicians.

When he visits Strasbourg, France, this week to participate in festivities marking NATO's 60th anniversary, President Obama should deliver a valedictory address, announcing his intention to withdraw the United States from the alliance. The U.S. has done its job. It's time for Europe to assume full responsibility for its own security, freeing the U.S. to attend to more urgent priorities.

An apartment building in the middle of a densely populated Tripoli neighborhood was obliterated early Sunday, and Libyan officials blamed the explosion on a bombing raid by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Several witnesses among the angry crowd gathered outside the semi-collapsed building said they heard aircraft before the post-midnight blast. The blast occurred in the Arada Street neighborhood of the Souk Juma district, a sprawling community that is one of Tripoli's most populous.

A NATO summit originally intended to allow members to signal an exit date for the unpopular 9-year-old war in Afghanistan instead concluded Saturday with an agreement leaving open the possibility that allied forces will remain in the unstable country for years to come. North Atlantic Treaty Organization leaders gathered in Lisbon signed an agreement with the Afghan government to transfer primary security responsibility from the alliance to Kabul by 2014, as NATO gradually shifts focus to training, advising and logistics.

These days, the parts of Afghanistan that are considered relatively safe may well have a bull's-eye painted on them. Insurgents staged deadly coordinated strikes Monday in the western city of Herat, where an explosion killed at least four people in a bustling downtown area and a car bomb detonated at the gates of a NATO base, injuring several Italian soldiers inside, Afghan and coalition officials said. An Afghan soldier died in a subsequent shootout. Herat, a normally tranquil city that lies close to Afghanistan's border with Iran, has been designated as one of the first areas of the country where Western troops are to hand over security responsibilities to Afghan forces beginning in July.

Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday developments in Libya show the U.S. approach to dealing with Moammar Kadafi was the right one. "Whether he's alive or dead, he's gone. The people of Libya have gotten rid of a dictator," Biden said at an event in New Hampshire, seeming to want to avoid a definitive statement on Kadafi.President Obama is due to address his death at 2 p.m. EDT from the White House. Biden also seemed to compare the regime change unfolding in Libya with the Bush administration's approach to Iraq.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan President Hamid Karzai, perhaps best known in the West for periodic well-aimed jabs at his NATO allies, is embarking on a determined charm offensive as he faces the prospect of seeing troops and, perhaps even more crucially, dollars slip away from his country. The Afghan government has long regarded the NATO alliance and its partners as a seemingly bottomless source of funding. But aides to Karzai say the president is heading to a landmark NATO summit in Chicago this weekend with a keen awareness of the financial pinch being felt from London to Tokyo.

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta heads to this weekend's NATO summit prepared to confront Pakistan over what he considers price-gouging for transport of supplies to Afghanistan and hoping for a "consensus" among allies over the war effort. In an interview before his arrival in Chicago, where the summit is scheduled to begin Sunday, Panetta all but ruled out paying Pakistan $5,000 for each truck carrying supplies across its territory for NATO troops waging the Afghanistan war. Pakistani officials have demanded that amount as a condition for reopening supply routes that have been closed to the alliance since fall.

Just days before a NATO summit that leaders had hoped would present a carefully scripted display of unity on Afghanistan, the inauguration of a French president committed to an early drawdown has instead intensified a rush for the exits from an unpopular war. In advance of this weekend's summit in Chicago, the Obama administration and senior North Atlantic Treaty Organization officials have been scrambling to ensure that alliance members remain...

On the heels of President Obama's surprise visit to Afghanistan last week, in which he pledged to "finish the job we started" and "end this war responsibly," the American public's support for the 11-year conflict has reached a new low, according to a poll. Just 27% of respondents said they back the U.S. military effort in Afghanistan, the new Associated Press-Gfk poll found. Of the 66% who said they oppose the war, about half said they believe the presence of American troops in Afghanistan is doing more harm than good.

MOSCOW - Russia may consider a preemptive strike on a missile defense system in Europe if the U.S.-led NATO project continues as planned, a top official said Thursday. Russian Chief of General Staff Nikolai Makarov, in a sign of the tension between Russia and the United States over the missile defense plans, said during an international conference that a strike by his country might be possible. "A decision to use destructive force preemptively will be taken if the situation worsens," Makarov said.

KABUL, Afghanistan — For the first time, a member of Afghanistan's elite special forces has carried out a deadly attack against an American military mentor, a senior Afghan army official said Friday, an ominous escalation in the "green-on-blue" shootings that have threatened Western troops' partnership with the Afghan police and army. Until now, rank-and-file members of the Afghan security forces had been responsible for most of the dozens of "insider" shootings targeting members of the NATO force in recent years.

The attitude of NATO toward Macedonia is shameful ("NATO Vows to Support Macedonia," March 20). During the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia, Macedonia helped thousands of refugees from Kosovo, some of whom stayed there and are still part of the Albanian minority. Furthermore, Macedonia gave airports and military bases to support NATO. Macedonia is a poor, democratic country with a small and badly equipped army. Why doesn't NATO want to help Macedonia when the stability of the region is threatened by ethnic Albanian terrorists (KLA)

What NATO talks about when it talks about Afghanistan depends largely on who's listening. A series of carefully calibrated messages on the direction of the 9-year-old war, each aimed at a different audience, will emanate from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit beginning Friday in Lisbon. To a war-weary European constituency: There's an exit strategy. To a conflicted American public, whose troops are bearing the brunt of rising battlefield casualties: Things are going better militarily, but it will still take some time.

Key editors at the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday explained the decision to publish a story and pictures of U.S. soldiers posing with body parts of Afghan suicide bombers, after questions were raised by the White House, the Pentagon and readers. In a live chat on latimes.com, Editor Davan Maharaj explained the decision to publish the material, especially the pictures, even though the events occurred two years ago. The publication comes at an especially sensitive time, with the U.S. and its NATO allies seeking to disengage from the Afghanistan war that began in October 2001.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan's parliament on Thursday approved guidelines that will frame a reset of the country's relations with the United States, paving the way to end a nearly five-month disruption in ties that began when errant U.S. airstrikes killed 24 Pakistani soldiers along the Afghan border. The guidelines called for halting U.S. drone strikes on Pakistani territory but put no mechanism in place to enforce such a ban. Most Pakistanis see the air campaign as a blatant breach of their country's sovereignty.