Saturday February 13, 2016
Kabul (BNA) The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member states on Friday reiterated commitments to continue supporting Afghan government and to provide financial assistance to its security forces until the end of 2020.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said this to reporters after the end of the military organization’s defense ministers meeting in Brussels. According to NATO Secretary General the member states had exchanged their views about situation in Afghanistan during the meeting. “The NATO member states had agreed to continue helping Afghan security forces in three areas of training, advising and equipment because these three elements were important for the stability of Afghanistan,” he said.
Afghan security forces required amount $4 billion annually for its expenditures which the NATO had pledged to provide it in their earlier conferences held in Chicago in 2012. According to Stoltenberg they evaluated the performance of Afghan security forces and supported the NATO Resolute Support (RS) mission in Afghanistan.
The top NATO official said that they would continue looking at the situations in Afghanistan and would work closely with Afghan security forces until the country got stabilized. “Afghan security forces have enhanced their abilities as they were in charge of the entire country’s security affairs. They have made positive development and proved that they were fully capable of responding to the Taliban and other insurgents’ attacks, adding there were still problems in some areas which need to be improved,” said Stoltenberg. He said militants’ attacks in 2016 may increase as President Ghani also pointed out to the issue. “We would stand by Afghan security forces knowing that situation were not good there, but We have trust on Afghan security forces that they could defend their country and improve law and order,” he said.
