President Hamid Karzai has urged NATO to finalise the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with Afghanistan that would allow the coalition-led troops to remain in the country post-2014, the president’s office said in a statement Sunday.
Karzai decided during a National Security Council meeting that the agreement with the NATO should be finalised quickly, the statement said.
“With regard to the national interest, talks with the NATO representatives over issues of the security agreement should start and the agreement be finalised soon,” Karzai said in the statement.
Speaking to reporters while attending the Munich Security Conference, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Saturday said that NATO is still planning for a military presence in Afghanistan post-2014.
“We are still planning for a presence after 2014, a resolute support, training mission, and that planning continues, and will continue, assuming that one day we will get a signature on the security arrangements,” Rasmussen said.
The top alliance leader argued that the Afghan security forces, currently numbering around 300,000 men, still need more training to handle the country’s security on their own, making it critical for a new security agreement to be signed to allow international forces to remain after 2014.
Karzai has so far refused to sign the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) with the United States, which NATO has said is a prerequisite to any deal between the alliance and Afghanistan.
U.S. and NATO officials have indicated that they would move ahead with a complete troop withdrawal before December if the agreement is not finalised soon. Uncertainty surrounds whether or not the next President set to be elected in April would have a significantly different approach to the issue than Karzai.
Of the roughly 80,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, around 47,000 are Americans.
Tolonews
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