Afghanistan Times
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AT Monitoring Desk-KABUL: NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg on Tuesday said the alliance has committed to provide $4 billion USD annually for the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) until 2020 year.
While speaking at the NATO foreign ministerial meeting held in Brussels, he said that current commitment was until 2017 but the alliance has extended this through to 2020. He also said that work to ensure finance Afghan security forces from 2018 to 2020 is currently underway.
He said that Chicago Summit several years ago decided to finance Afghan security forces till the end of 2017, where currently work is underway to extent the financial support to ANSF after 2017.
“I will talk about the issue at the foreign ministerial meeting and final decision will be taken at the NATO summit in July next year,” he said.
We will also look at ways to strengthen our long-term partnership with Afghanistan, he said. He further said that NATO would also discuss how to continue training, advising and assisting Afghan security forces during 2016. Stoltenberg said that NATO wants to keep 12,000 troops up to the end of 2016.
He assured that they would not abandoned Afghanistan, instead continuing to support Afghans and decision would be taken based on the facts on the ground.
