NATO: Yes to Missle Shield, No to Ukraine, Georgia

Reuters reports NATO leaders were set to endorse a planned U.S. missile shield for Europe on Thursday, a senior U.S. official told reporters.

The final summit statement would "recognize the substantive contribution to the protection of the allies" from the missile defense system to be deployed in the Czech Republic and Poland, the official told reporters.

According to the BBC, NATO has confirmed it will not yet offer membership to Georgia or Ukraine after the 26-member alliance was split amid strong objections from Russia.

Due to a conflict between Greece and Macedonia over a territorial issue, the alliance also said it would not invite Macedonia to join.

In what may be a continuation toward increased NATO influence in the Middle East, United States will be able to move some of its troops to Afghanistan's south once France sends a battalion of troops to the east of Afghanistan as part of efforts to bolster the 47,000-strong peacekeeping force, meeting Canada's conditions to keep troops in Afghanistan, the official said.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said earlier

Iran Supplying the Taliban?

Not that Bush and Co. need more reasons to expand the war in the Middle East, but the Iranians are making the case easier to sell, if the story below is true.

According to the AP
NATO has intercepted Iranian weapons shipments to Afghanistan's Taliban insurgents, providing evidence Iran is violating international law to aid a group it once considered a bitter enemy, a senior U.S. diplomat said Wednesday.

"There's irrefutable evidence the Iranians are now doing this," Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said on CNN. "It's certainly coming from the government of Iran. It's coming from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard corps command, which is a basic unit of the Iranian government."
Speaking separately to The Associated Press, Burns said NATO must act to stop the shipments. The Iran-Afghanistan frontier is "a very long border. But the Iranians need to know that we are there and that we're going to oppose this."

"It's a very serious question," he said, adding that Iran is in "outright violation" of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

The State Department later appeared to step back from Burns' assertion the Iranian government was directly involved in the transfers but stressed Washington has proof that weapons from Iran were being sent to Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

"We absolutely are certain that there are Iranian-origin weapons flowing into Afghanistan to the Taliban," spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.