NATO to send 7,000 more troops to Afghanistan

Fri Dec 4, 2009

NATO pledges to contribute over 7,000 troops to the US-led war in Afghanistan, while ruling out any withdrawal of foreign forces in the foreseeable future.

The Western alliance's Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Friday that "at least 25 countries will send more forces to the mission in 2010. They have offered around 7,000 new forces with more to come," the Reuters news agency reported.

"That is solidarity in action and it will have a powerful effect on the ground," he added.

While speaking of the US-dominated alliance's supposed intentions to gradually entrust security with the Afghan military and police force, the NATO chief insisted that "transition doesn't mean exit."

"There should be no misunderstanding -- We are not going to leave Afghanistan to fall back into the hands of terrorists and the extremists who host them. It will not happen," he added.

On Tuesday, US President Barack Obama promised the deployment of 30,000 American troops in Afghanistan. Obama also said he expected allied countries to contribute 5,000 soldiers to the mission.

The call has been acknowledged by Britain with Prime Minister Gordon Brown offering an extra 500 troops. Poland and the Czech Republic have expressed readiness to commit a total of 700 troops to the operations.

France, Germany and the non-NATO Australian ally are yet to respond to Obama's plea.

There are currently around 110,000 American and other foreign soldiers deployed in Afghanistan under the US command.

Leading its allied troops, the United States invaded the violence-hit country in 2001, accusing the Taliban-controlled Afghan government of supporting al-Qaeda, which the US officials had blamed for the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The so-called counterinsurgency operations have so far left many thousands of Afghan civilians as well as Nearly 800 American troops dead.

The war-ravaged country is also grappling with unprecedented violence, as the fighting trudges along its ninth year.

Obama, however, has vowed to "finish the job" in Afghanistan and win the required public support for his allegedly overhauled battleground strategies.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://edition.presstv.ir/detail/112843.html.