NATO backtracks after leak about proposed strategy

BERLIN - NATO was reeling yesterday after the leaking of a classified document in which the military alliance's supreme commander of Europe proposed that NATO soldiers serving in Afghanistan shoot drug traffickers and destroy drug laboratories without waiting for proof.

The proposal by General John Craddock, an American, was criticized by all political parties here for flouting international law and for trying to alter NATO's mission in Afghanistan. Such an order, they said, would signal a major shift in how the alliance deals with the insurgency and the opium trade that finances the Taliban and other groups fighting the 55,000-member NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.

In a letter he wrote Jan. 5 to General Egon Ramms, a German who heads the NATO Command Center responsible for Afghanistan, Craddock said that it was "no longer necessary to produce intelligence or other evidence that each particular drug trafficker or narcotics facility in Afghanistan meets the criteria of being a military objective."

In his reply, Ramms questioned the legality of the proposal, which he contended would violate international law and the law of armed conflict.

General David McKiernen, US commander of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Forces in Afghanistan, also objected to the proposal, which was leaked Thursday to Spiegel Online. NATO officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the existence of the proposal and of Craddock's letter.

NATO would not comment yesterday on the particulars of Craddock's proposal or on Ramms's reply. "We will not comment on the substance," said a spokesman, James Appathurai, who added, "What I will say is that General Craddock never issued final orders. No action was given." Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, NATO's secretary general, has ordered an investigation into how the proposal was leaked. "There will be no stone left unturned," he said yesterday.

Craddock drew up the proposal for dealing with opium trafficking after a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Budapest in October, during which they agreed to destroy any drug laboratories "and facilitators" who supported the insurgency.

But that strategy was arrived at by all 26 alliance members only after opposition from Germany, France, and other countries. They feared that NATO would be dragged into a situation in which communities that depend on the opium trade for their livelihood would turn against NATO.