Posted on 08/03/2003 8:20:04 AM PDT by Valin
NATO will stay in Afghanistan as long as it is needed following its takeover of command of the peacekeeping International Security Assistance Force on August 11, an ISAF spokesman said on Sunday.
"The actual mandate of ISAF lasts until June 2004 according to the underlying political frame, which is the Bonn agreement, and NATO on the other hand is prepared to take over indefinitely as long as there will be a political need for ISAF," German Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Loebbering told reporters at a press conference.
Elections are due to be held by June 2004 under the Bonn agreement made following the fall of the Taliban in late 2001.
Under its United Nations mandate, ISAF is responsible for security in Kabul and that will not change under NATO, Loebbering said.
"To give the whole thing a motto, it will be 'consistency and continuity' so there will be no change of the ISAF mandate due to the fact that NATO will take over the lead," he said.
"There will no longer be any search for a new lead nation every six months because that will be provided by NATO."
Since it was established in December 2001, command of ISAF has changed every six months.
The current joint German-Dutch term of command ends on August 11 when NATO takes over.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai and high-ranking German, Dutch and NATO officials would attend the handover ceremony in Kabul, Loebbering said, declining to name the Europeans for security reasons.
Karzai and the United Nations have been repeatedly rebuffed in their call for ISAF to be extended to the provinces where security remains a problem.
Loebbering stressed that non-NATO nations would continue to contribute troops to ISAF after the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation assumes command, pointing out that non-NATO New Zealand and Switzerland would still provide troops.
ISAF currently has around 4,600 troops contributed by 15 NATO members and 15 non-NATO nations. However, around 90 percent of those soldiers are from NATO nations.
Germany's joint command ends after six months during which four German troops were killed and 29 others injured by a suicide bomber in the worst ever attack on the force.
From August 11 ISAF will be led by Lieutenant General Goetz Gliemeroth, chief of NATO's Joint Command Centre at Heidelberg, Germany, with Canadian Army Major General Andrew Leslie as his deputy.
Canada is contributing 1,950 troops, who will replace some of the German soldiers currently serving with the peacekeepers.
A separate US-led coalition force of some 12,500 troops is hunting down Taliban and al-Qaeda remnants in the south and east of Afghanistan.
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