NATO chief warns Karzai over delays in US-Afghan troop deal
27 January 2014, 19:13
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Monday warned Afghan President Hamid Karzai not to underestimate the negative impact of delaying a deal with the United States on the deployment of troops after 2014.
On Saturday, Karzai listed a series of conditions that should be met before he can sign a legal text enabling US troops to remain in the country in 2015.
The document, which was agreed in principle months ago, forms the basis for a similar agreement with all NATO members. It would enable the alliance to provide training and assistance after its combat mission ends in Afghanistan this year. Without signature of the US deal, NATO's future role in the country is also in limbo.
'The Afghan political leadership should not underestimate the negative impact it has on the public and politicians in troop contributing countries,' Rasmussen said in Brussels, where he was presenting NATO's annual report.
Karzai insists he will not sign the deal until a peace process with the Taliban is underway.
Some 2,500 tribal elders from 34 provinces of Afghanistan approved the agreement with the US in a grand assembly (known in Afghanistan as a Loya Jirga) in late November. The elders also urged Karzai to sign it as soon as possible.
Karzai, whose final term ends in a few months' time, has kept insisting that the US must stop military operations and airstrikes on Afghan villages and homes, initiate peace talks with the Taliban and release Afghan Taliban prisoners from Guantanamo prison.
'If the US wants the bilateral security agreement to be signed, then it should accept our conditions. If not, they can leave anytime and Afghans can go without foreigners,' Karzai said on Saturday.
But Rasmussen warned on Monday that a full departure of international troops after 2014 would make it 'extremely difficult to generate financial support for sustaining the Afghan security forces.'
'An Afghan security force of 350,000 soldiers and police goes well beyond the financial capacity of the Afghan government,' Rasmussen warned.
'Simply put, I don't know how the Afghans will be able to finance, to pay salaries to soldiers and police if they don't get any financial support from the international community,' he said.
Such a move would also jeopardize international development assistance, the NATO chief warned.
He said time was running out, since the alternative - full withdrawal from Afghanistan - also required 'several months' of preparation.
NATO defence ministers are to discuss the issue later this month, Rasmussen said, adding: 'I think at that time we will have to take some tough decisions.'
Voice of Russia, dpa
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