AFGHANISTAN - Oct. 13 - UN Backs Wider Nato Deployment In Afghanistan.

The 15-nation Security Council unanimously approves a resolution which expands the scope of the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, mission so it can provide security across the country, a change long sought by President Hamid Karzai and the UN. The Security Council authorises the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Afghanistan to send troops anywhere in the country rather than keep them confined to the capital, Kabul, and its environs. But the measure, which also renews the ISAF's UN mandate for another year, is likely to have little immediate impact as few countries are willing to commit troops at this time. "This resolution helps pave the way for the increased security in Afghanistan on which everything else is dependent, " says US Ambassador and the Security Council president for October, John Negroponte. While Washington was initially cool to the idea, it changed its mind after NATO took the ISAF command on August 11, he says. The first new troops in rural Afghanistan are expected to come from Germany, which has said it wants to send up to 450 soldiers to the northern district of Kunduz to form a Provincial Reconstruction Team, a group of aid workers under military protection. Germany agrees to do so only if its soldiers were a part of the NATO mission and not the US force in Afghanistan of some 12, 500 soldiers that is trying to track down al Qaeda and Taliban militants in the south.