NATO agreed on Thursday to take command of peacekeeping across all of insurgency-hit Afghanistan next month after the United States pledged to transfer an extra 12,000 troops to its force, Reuters reported. Pentagon officials said the transfer of troops currently in Afghanistan's eastern region would entail the biggest deployment of U.S. troops under foreign command since World War Two. The accord came as European nations failed to plug all troop shortfalls identified by commanders battling a fiercer than expected Taliban insurgency, and will mean the United States providing 14,000 of some 32,000 NATO troops now under British command. "I am grateful that the United States has decided to bring its forces under ISAF," Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told reporters after a NATO meeting in Slovenia, referring to NATO's International Security Assistance Force.
