Russian Foreign Minister sharply criticizes NATO’s withdrawal plan from Afghanistan

Russia’s foreign minister sharply criticized NATO’s plan to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan by 2014, saying Thursday that coalition troops should remain in the country until Afghan government forces are capable of ensuring
security.

“As long as Afghanistan is not able to ensure by itself the security in the country, the artificial timelines of withdrawal are not correct and they should not be set,” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

NATO plans to hand over lead responsibility for the war against the Taliban to the Afghan army and police by the middle of next year, and to withdraw its troops by the end of 2014. It has already started drawing down its forces,
which reached a peak of about 140,000 last year.

NATO leaders say that Afghan forces are improving rapidly and will be able to counter Taliban guerrillas after 2014. But critics have pointed to widespread drug use and the high desertion rate among government forces as signs that
it remains unprepared to handle the insurgents.

Nato Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen responded to Lavrov’s criticism saying the withdrawal schedule had been agreed with the government in Kabul, and that it was “definitely not artificial.” He also urged Russia, China
and other non-Nato countries to help fund the post-2014 Afghan armed forces.

The Afghan army and police are scheduled to expand to over 350,000 members in the next several months. NATO has already handed over to them responsibility for security over half of the country’s population, and the transition is
set to continue.

Lavrov, who attended a meeting of NATO defense and foreign ministers in Brussels, said China and other countries in Asia were also worried about the withdrawal schedule. Moscow views Nato’s military effort in Afghanistan as crucial
for its own security, including helping to prevent instability from spreading into ex-Soviet Central Asia. 

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Posted by Hamza Jahangir on Apr 19 2012. Filed under Pakistan, USA, World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry