OSLO, Norway - Norway will send an additional 250 troops, including special forces, and helicopters to bolster NATO-led peacekeeping forces for Afghanistan next year, the defense minister announced Tuesday.
Defense Minister Anne-Grethe Stroem-Erichsen said the force will include 150 special forces troops based in the Kabul region for 18 months beginning around March 2008.
She said Norway, a member of the NATO alliance, will also send 100 infantry troops and two or three helicopters early next year to reinforce the current Norwegian contingent, based near the northern Afghanistan city of Maymana.
"It is completely necessary to increase the military presence in that area to create security,'' said Stroem-Erichsen.
The Norwegian military said its nation's soldiers, together with Afghan government troops and other international peacekeepers, have been engaged in tough battles against insurgents in the country's north this week.
In addition to the combat troops, Norway will send about 50 experts to Kabul and northern Afghanistan to help train police and government troops.
Norway has been reluctant to send its troops to the violent southern part of Afghanistan. Stroem-Erichsen said, in principle, the special forces could be sent anywhere in the country in an acute crisis, but that the government's approval would be needed before they could be sent outside the Kabul region for planned missions.
The additional troops will bring the number of soldiers from the Nordic nation of 4.7 million people to about 700 in Afghanistan.
