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Nato endorses Afghan exit strategy
Leaders meeting in Lisbon back plans to hand over military command in Afghanistan to local government by 2014.
Last Modified: 20 Nov 2010 14:09 GMT
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Karzai, who joined the Nato summit in Lisbon on Saturday, has called for a reduction in US military operations [AFP] Nato will start pulling troops out of Afghanistan next year and hand over responsibility for security to Afghan forces in 2014, the alliance has said after a two-day summit in Lisbon.Nato leaders endorsed the plan after meeting behind closed doors in the Portuguese city to discuss an exit strategy from Afghanistan on the final day of the summit on Saturday.
Anders Fogh Ramussen, Nato's secretary-general, Barack Obama. the US president, Hamid Karzai, his Afghan counterpart, and Ban Ki-Moon, the UN secretary-general, were all present at the meeting, which also discussed how best to prepare Afghan forces for the handover.
"We have launched the process by which the Afghan people will once again become masters in their own house," Rasmussen told a news conference following a summit. "The aim is for Afghan forces to be in the lead countrywide by the end of 2014."
Rasmussen said that Nato would not abandon Afghanistan after the handover. "We will stay after transition in a supporting role, " he said. "President Karzai and I have signed an agreement on a long term partnership between Nato and Afghanistan that will endure beyond our combat mission," he added.
"To put it simply, if the Taliban or anyone else aim to wait us out, they can forget it. We will stay as long at it takes to finish our job," he said.
The plan closely resembles a proposed timetable put forward by Obama earlier on Saturday.
"I look forward to working with our ... partners as we move towards a new phase, transition to Afghan responsibility, which begins in 2011, with Afghan forces taking the lead on security across Afghanistan by 2014," the US president said.
Nothing new
But Al Jazeera's James Bays, reporting from the summit, said there was no guarentee that the timetable for withdrawal would be met."Remember, at the beginning of this year there was a big conference in London, and that conference said that tranistion should have started by now, but that has not happened. So this is nothing new," he said.
"To put it simply, if the Taliban or anyone else aim to wait us out, they can forget it. We will stay as long at it takes to finish our job"
Anders Fogh Ramussen, NATO Secretary General
Al Jazeera's Sue Turton, reporting from the Afghan capital, Kabul, said that many in volatile parts of Afghanistan doubt whether the country is ready to begin taking over responsibility for security.
"There was a opinion poll that went down in to the southern provinces to ask people what they thought about Afghans taking over security and over 60 per cent of young, fighting-age men said they did not believe that the Afghans were capable of taking over security," she said.
Ban Ki-Moon appeared to strike a note of caution in the press coference. "There is no short-cut to peace," he told reporters, saying decisions should be made based on "realities" not "schedules".
This year has been the deadliest for Nato forces and Afghan civilians. Another foreign soldier on Friday fell to a bomb attack, taking the toll for the year to 654.
The number of Afghans killed in the conflict rose by a third in the first six months of 2010 to 1,271, with most deaths caused by Taliban and al-Qaeda attacks, the UN reported in August.
Russian co-operation
The alliance will hold a separate meeting with Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, later on Saturday to strike a new co-operation deal on Afghanistan.
Russia has co-operated with Nato on Afghanistan by allowing alliance supplies to transit through its territory and providing counter-narcotics training to Afghan officials outside Moscow.
Nato, which has faced fierce attacks by pro-Taliban groups on fuel vehicles on Pakistani roads, wants Russia to allow equipment in and out of Afghanistan and expand the list of permitted goods to include armoured vehicles.
Russia has so far only allowed a one-way transit of non-lethal Nato supplies by train to Afghanistan. Weapons would still not be permitted under a new deal, Nato officials said.
Source:
Agencies
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