North Atlantic Treaty Organization

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.

A message allegedly written by the leader of the Afghan Taliban predicts imminent victory as more foreign troops die and Taliban fighters better understand NATO tactics, acquire more weaponry, shoot down more aircraft and kill more senior officials. The lengthy statement released Monday, signed by Mullah Mohammed Omar, the movement's reclusive, one-eyed leader, follows President Obama's announcement in June that 10,000 American troops will leave this year. The U.S. drawdown is part of an accelerated withdrawal by foreign troops ahead of a 2014 deadline for transferring security to the Afghans.

More than 7,000 servicemen from the United States and nine other North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries began naval exercises in the Strait of Gibraltar on Monday involving 40 warships and 50 aircraft, NATO officials said.

With victory still elusive after 15 weeks of bombing, Western allies arrayed against Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi are racing to crack his regime before their own coalition fractures. Even as Libyan rebel fighters begin to show improvement and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization increases airstrikes in the western part of the country, signs of friction have appeared within NATO. Members have expressed concern about declining munitions inventories and warned that the costs and stresses of the campaign cannot be sustained.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization said Thursday that it has appointed Italian Adm. Antonino Geraci, 61, as the new commander of the alliance's naval forces in Southern Europe.

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev has told the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that he cannot accept an invitation to visit the Western Alliance's headquarters for at least the next five to six months.

Construction of two new North Atlantic Treaty Organization radar stations in Iceland to improve tracking of Soviet operations in the North Atlantic will start later this year, Foreign Minister Geir Hallgrimsson said Friday.

A multi-national North Atlantic Treaty Organization naval task force will hold maneuvers off northern Norway Nov. 24-27, a NATO official said Sunday.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization commanders for central Europe, citing the changes in Eastern Europe, canceled war games that were scheduled to begin Monday and last until March 28, military officials said.

Turkish Defense Minister Ercan Vuralhan will meet British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in London this week for talks likely to focus on updating Turkey's armed forces. He will have two days of talks in London before going to West Germany Friday for informal talks with other ministers from North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries, a ministry spokesman said Tuesday.

NATO officials admitted Sunday that the alliance was probably responsible for an airstrike in a densely populated Tripoli neighborhood that Libyan authorities said killed nine people and injured 18. The early-morning airstrike destroyed one apartment building, crushing residents beneath tons of debris while they were sleeping, Libyan authorities said. Half a dozen other homes on the normally quiet street were also damaged. NATO said "there may have been a weapons system failure which may have caused a number of civilian casualties.

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.

Outgoing Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates lashed out at some of America's closest European allies, complaining that NATO's shaky air assault in Libya had laid bare shortcomings that are pushing the alliance toward "collective military irrelevance. " In an unusual public rebuke Friday, Gates condemned European nations for years of declining defense budgets that he said have forced the United States to shoulder the heaviest load by far in the 62-year-old alliance. Gates noted with frustration that fewer than half the 28 nations in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are engaged in the Libyan conflict, and that fewer than a third are conducting airstrikes, even though the coalition unanimously backed the decision to go to war to protect civilians from Moammar Kadafi's forces.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Wednesday urged more NATO allies to join the air campaign against Libya, arguing that it was putting a strain on the seven members of the 28-nation alliance that are carrying the burden in a conflict that shows few signs of ending soon, U.S. officials said. In a sign of the growing strain that the 3-month-old operation is putting on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Gates took the unusual step of naming five alliance members with limited or no role in the operation that he said should provide strike aircraft to hit ground targets in Libya or other capabilities, according to a senior U.S. official.

A tattered tent, shreds of carpet and other scorched debris were all that were left of a favored retreat of Moammar Kadafi just outside the Libyan capital, the aftermath of what appeared to be a NATO bombing run. Was the usually idyllic nature preserve a "command and control" center used by the Libyan military? Or was this an example of NATO attempting to assassinate the longtime Libyan dictator? A NATO official reached in Naples, Italy, late Wednesday emphasized that the Western alliance does not target people for killings, and the official would not confirm that North Atlantic Treaty Organization warplanes had even struck the site Tuesday.

A series of NATO airstrikes on Libyan government vessels left ships burned, battered and sunk in three ports Friday as the alliance sought to degrade the ability of Moammar Kadafi's regime to attack from the sea. The strikes came after alliance forces in recent weeks observed Libyan vessels threatening NATO ships and carrying out "indiscriminate mining" in sea lanes off the rebel-held city of Misurata, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization said....

NATO soldiers killed an estimated 70 to 80 Taliban militants in fighting in southern Afghanistan after police told military authorities where insurgents had gathered, an official said. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization suffered no casualties in the weekend fighting in Helmand province, said a spokesman for the alliance's International Security Assistance Force.

A powerful bomb damaged a building housing the North Atlantic Assembly and an adjacent historic mansion in Brussels, slightly injuring three people. A group called the Revolutionary Front for Proletarian Action claimed responsibility for the blast, which tore away a wall of the 19th-Century building housing the assembly, an independent affiliate of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

NATO's top official said Thursday that the air campaign in Libya had seriously damaged Moammar Kadafi's ability to fight and that continued military and political pressure would "eventually lead to the collapse" of the North African strongman's regime. But two months into its aerial campaign, there are signs of impatience within the alliance because Kadafi has managed to cling to power so long and concern that the confrontation could settle into a protracted stalemate unless NATO ratchets up its operations.

The United States, France and Britain said Thursday that they "remained united" in their determination to see Moammar Kadafi relinquish power in Libya, even as a meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Berlin heard a top commander appeal for more ground attack aircraft to bolster the alliance's efforts against Kadafi's forces. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sought to smooth over tensions among NATO members, saying that Kadafi "is testing our determination....