NATO must stay in Afghanistan as long as it takes to finish the job, the alliance’s secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen told member states Monday, urging unfaltering support. “It is of utmost importance that we stay the course, that we stay as long as it takes to finish our job,” Rasmussen told a session of NATO’s parliamentary assembly in the Black Sea city of Varna. The assembly is NATO’s key link to the parliaments of its member states, which vote on defence budgets and approve troop deployment abroad. Rasmussen urged the assembly to increase defence budgets and keep up contributions to NATO’s mission in Afghanistan, which was far from complete. “The fact that Osama bin Laden does not any longer pose a threat to the international community will have a positive impact on the situation in Afghanistan,” he said.
“However, we should also realise that there are still terrorist networks in the world and the reason why we are in Afghanistan is that we want to prevent the country from becoming a safe haven for terrorists once again.” Rasmussen praised the “rapid progress” in training Afghan security forces, with more than 290,000 soldiers and police now fully prepared to take up their country’s own security. But a rapid exit from Afghanistan at this point was still “premature,” he added. “In that case we would easily leave behind a security vacuum.” Instead, NATO plans a gradual transition starting in July, when the alliance’s ISAF security forces will hand over responsibility for seven provinces and districts representing 25 percent of the Afghan population, Rasmussen said. “That is a very remarkable start of the transition process and hopefully we will see it completed by end-2014,” he added.
