Nato endorses Afghan 'exit strategy'

21/11/2010| IslamWeb

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 Rasmussen, 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.

Rasmussen said that Nato would not abandon Afghanistan after the handover. "We will stay after transition in a supporting role," he said.

The plan closely resembles a proposed timetable put forward by Obama earlier on Saturday.

Nothing new

But Al Jazeera's James Bays, reporting from the summit, said there was no guarantee 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 transition should have started by now, but that has not happened. So this is nothing new," he said.

Obama says he is confident the US will be able to begin its pullout in July 2011.

Obama acknowledged that he sometimes has "blunt" conversations with Karzai, who stunned Washington by criticizing military operations.

Ban Ki-moon appeared to strike a note of caution in the press conference. "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 Afghan civilians and Nato forces. Another foreign soldier on Friday was killed by 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.

Russian cooperation

Nato also reached agreement with Russia to expand an overland supply route to Afghanistan to allow for the transport of heavy vehicles and for the return of Nato equipment to Europe.

Rasmussen said the agreement showed ‘determination to establish stronger ties’ with Moscow, the alliance's historical Cold War enemy.

The route from Europe to Afghanistan via Russia and Central Asia serves as an alternative to the ambush-prone logistics link through Pakistan. The new agreement enhances that by allowing for heavy equipment such as armored vehicles to be hauled.

Meanwhile, thousands of anti-Nato protesters marched peacefully through downtown Lisbon on Saturday to lodge their opposition to the war in Afghanistan.

The demonstrators chanted "peace yes, NATO no" as they walked through Nato's main thoroughfare. Police said that the demonstration passed off peacefully.

PHOTO CAPTION

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen (L), Portugal's Prime Minister Jose Socrates (R) and Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev arrive for the NATO Russia Council Meeting during the second day of the NATO Summit in Lisbon November 20, 2010.

Al-Jazeera