NATO expects Afghan forces to take control of security over their entire country by the middle of next year while foreign troops will shift to a support role, the alliance’s chief said on Thursday. “We expect the last provinces to be handed over to the Afghanistan security forces by mid-2013,” NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told reporters ahead of two days of talks among alliance defence ministers. “From that time Afghan security forces are in the lead all over Afghanistan. And from that time, the role of our troops will gradually change from combat to support. In that, there’s nothing new,” he said. US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta indicated as he arrived for the talks that NATO would “transition from a combat role to a train and advise and assist role” by the end of 2013. But Panetta and Rasmussen portrayed the approach as in keeping with a gradual NATO plan adopted in Lisbon in November 2010, which calls for handing over security duties to Afghan forces by the end of 2014. “That decision and that roadmap still stand,” Rasmussen said, adding that decisions will be made at the NATO summit in Chicago in May. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is also facing a difficult election, had appeared to upend the strategy last week when he announced France would withdraw combat forces a year early, in 2013. But Rasmussen indicated that the 28-nation alliance was in sync. “Based on all I have heard, and all I have seen, I think all allies and all partners stick to the decisions we took in Lisbon,” he said.
