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NATO faces tough decisions on staying in Afghanistan

27 January 2014 20:39 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. NATO faces tough decisions next month about whether to pull all its troops out of Afghanistan after this year if President Hamid Karzai does not sign accords allowing them to stay, the alliance's leader said on Monday, APA reports quoting Reuters.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen repeated his warning that the 28-nation alliance would be forced to pull all its troops out of Afghanistan by year-end if it does not have a legal framework in place to keep some there.

The Afghan government and the United States have agreed the legal terms for U.S. troops to stay in Afghanistan after the end of 2014, when NATO-led forces are due to end combat operations, leaving behind a much smaller training and advisory mission.

But Karzai has said he will not sign the agreement unless certain conditions are met, and even then, not until after April elections.

"For planning reasons, we need to know soon whether we're invited or not. If we are not invited, if we don't have any legal framework, then we can't stay in Afghanistan after 2014, it is as simple as that, and it takes some time to close down our bases in Afghanistan," an unusually emotional Rasmussen told a news conference.

Rasmussen declined to say how long NATO could wait to reach an agreement and still have enough time to prepare for the new post-2014 mission. But if there is no deal, it would have to withdraw all forces and equipment by the end of this year.

"So we'll discuss it when defense ministers meet here at headquarters (in late February) and I think at that time we will have to take some tough decisions," he said.