Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Saturday that Afghanistan would appreciate any expansion of the NATO-led peacekeeping force in the country, considered vital for the reconstruction of the war-ravaged nation.
The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was formed shortly after the fall of the hard-line Taliban regime in 2001.
So far ISAF has limited its activities mainly to providing security in Kabul.
In December ISAF expanded its force outside the capital for the first time, sending some 200 German soldiers to work with a civil-military provincial reconstruction team (PRT) in the quiet northern city of Kunduz.
"The expansion of the ISAF, or the expansion of the operation that NATO has now taken over, especially in the PRT, is very, very important for the improvement of reconstruction activity of Afghanistan and also for better security," Karzai said at the presidential palace.
"So we value whatever decision they take in this regard."
NATO defense ministers meeting informally in Munich, Germany on Friday have agreed to a modest increase in the scope of ISAF, officials said.
The US has pressed its NATO allies to take a larger role in Afghanistan and Iraq, leading to several countries offering to work with provincial reconstruction teams under ISAF.
No information on what countries stepped forward and where the teams would be deployed was provided.
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
STEADFAST DART: The six-week exercise, which involves about 10,000 troops from nine nations, focuses on rapid deployment scenarios and multidomain operations NATO is testing its ability to rapidly deploy across eastern Europe — without direct US assistance — as Washington shifts its approach toward European defense and the war in Ukraine. The six-week Steadfast Dart 2025 exercises across Bulgaria, Romania and Greece are taking place as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches the three-year mark. They involve about 10,000 troops from nine nations and represent the largest NATO operation planned this year. The US absence from the exercises comes as European nations scramble to build greater military self-sufficiency over their concerns about the commitment of US President Donald Trump’s administration to common defense and
RSS