Georgia offers NATO troops for Afghanistan

By Mark John

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Georgia offered several hundred troops on Monday to support French and Dutch NATO troops in Afghanistan, two days before an alliance summit it hopes will boost its membership aspirations.

Foreign Minister David Bakradze said in an interview that Georgia had already indicated last year it planned to send troops and their deployment was not dependent on the outcome of this week's NATO summit in Bucharest.

However the formal offer of support to two countries which, according to diplomats, believe it is too early to offer Georgia and ex-Soviet Ukraine membership plans buttresses Tbilisi's argument that it can add value to the military alliance.

"Whatever happens in Bucharest, they will go and fight," Bakradze told Reuters by telephone.

He said Georgia was offering to send some 120 troops to support the French contingent in Kabul and 200 to accompany the Dutch in the southern province of Uruzgan which has seen some of the worse violence in a Taliban-led insurgency.

"Altogether there will be something over 350 troops ... The reaction was positive," said Bakradze, adding that they were expected to deploy in late August or early September.

The Georgian forces will be deployed without "caveats", the national restrictions on what tasks they may perform and where they will go, which NATO commanders say have hampered the 47,000-strong International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

Bakradze said some smaller units would also be deployed alongside U.S. troops in Afghanistan. A Georgian Defense Ministry source said the whole contingent could reach 500.