NATO has called on the Netherlands to keep Dutch troops in Afghanistan after a dispute about their mission brought about the collapse of the government in The Hague.
A Nato spokesman said the organisation would provide support to Afghans no matter what happened, after the governor of Uruzgan told the BBC that peace and reconstruction efforts would suffer a setback if the Dutch left.
Any withdrawal of Dutch troops would be extremely bad news for the organistaion in its struggle to install the Karzai government across all of Afghanistan, after struggling to gather the 10,000 troops that the US army wants to accompany the 30,000 US reinforcements sent there.
"If they withdraw and leave these projects incomplete, then they will leave a big vacuum," the governor said.
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More than 16 hours of talks failed to save the three-year-old centre-left coalition, after the Labour Party, the PvdA, said it would not support extending the unpopular Dutch deployment in Afghanistan beyond 2010.
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen asked the Netherlands earlier this month to take on a new training role and remain in Afghanistan until August 2011, a year longer than planned.
The request had required unanimous cabinet approval.
Around 1,950 Dutch troops are deployed in Afghanistan's Uruzgan province, where opium production is high, under the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.
The Dutch mission, which started in 2006, has already been extended by two years and has cost 21 soldiers' lives.
Alliance spokesman James Appathurai told AFP Saturday that, "This is a Dutch discussion which NATO respects."
But he added that Rasmussen "continues to believe that the best way forward for the overall mission could be a new smaller Dutch operation after August 201O."
This new mission would focus on the provincial reconstruction team in Uruzgan, with greater emphasis on training, he said.
"Whatever happens after that date the Afghan people can be sure that NATO will continue to support them for as long as necessary," Appathurai added.
