The spokesman's perspective:

Continuing our new series of video commentary, NATO Spokesman James Appathurai gives his personal perspective on recent articles discussing NATO. He invites you to write in with your own comments and opinions, which could be featured in the next installment.

E-mail comments to: press@hq.nato.int

Emphasis has shifted toward the importance of spending on embattled country's development, Canadian officials say.

NATO has all but given up asking member countries to provide troops to help Canada and its allies fight the Taliban in the embattled south of Afghanistan, and instead will shift to pressing countries such as Germany and France to provide money, aid workers and supplies to the region, ministers from member nations said yesterday.

U.S. government and NATO officials ordered sweeping reviews of the mission in Afghanistan amid concerns the mission there is failing.

Two U.S. reviews and one NATO examination signal a recognition that development on political and economic stabilization, counter-terrorist operations and curbing the production of opium and heroin trafficking is in a dire state, The New York Times said Sunday.

Faced with a strengthened Taliban and signs al Qaeda is regrouping in its former stronghold, the United States and NATO are conducting a wide-ranging review of operations in Afghanistan, U.S. officials said on Monday.

NATO's top operational commander has called for a surge in efforts to provide basic amenities such as roads, healthcare and schools to Afghans to drive a wedge between the majority population and insurgents.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said Monday it is "critical" that NATO countries do more to stabilize Afghanistan, or they risk losing the war.

Responding to a report in The Australian newspaper, which quoted Defense Minister Joel Fitzgibbon as saying NATO forces were "winning the battles and not the war" in Afghanistan, Rudd said more efforts were needed to keep the situation from spiraling out of control.

NATO will lose the war in Afghanistan unless it changes its tactics in the fight against Taliban insurgents, the Australian newspaper reported, citing Australia's Defense Minister Joel Fitzgibbon.

"We are winning the battles and not the war, in my view,'' said Fitzgibbon, who attended talks in Scotland last week on how to end the six-year insurgency, the newspaper reported. "We have been very successful in clearing areas of the Taliban but it's having no real strategic effect.''

Afghan and NATO-led forces killed 20 Taliban fighters and wounded another nine in an operation west of the main southern city of Kandahar, the provincial police chief said on Monday.

The Zherai district, west of Kandahar, is a hotbed of Taliban activity that has been fought over many times between insurgents and Afghan and mainly Canadian troops. Some villages have changed hands several times.

The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) is concerned about NATO's initiatives of building up military potential in Europe, CSTO Secretary General Nikolai Bordyuzha said.

"The balance of powers has recently changed in Europe. It is not Russia and not the CSTO member states, but NATO, that initiated this," Bordyuzha told Interfax-AVN on Monday.

Russia has threatened to target two proposed American bases in Europe with its nuclear missiles if the Pentagon pressed ahead with its plans for a missile defence shield.

In an escalation of the Cold War-style threats favoured by President Vladimir Putin, the general in charge of Russia's ballistic arsenal said that he could target the bases in Poland and the Czech Republic that will host the missile-interceptor shield if America insists on building them.

In a blanket of fresh snow along the bank of the Ottawa River, 1,000 soldiers from the Royal Canadian Regiment and other units practiced this month for eventual combat in southern Afghanistan.

The troops are destined next year for Kandahar province, where Canada has been doing most of the fighting for NATO against the resurgent Taliban militia. That may not last. With most Canadians now opposed to staying in the war, Canada is weighing whether to pull out its 2,500 troops in 2009, which would deal a major blow to the fragile coalition's efforts.