NATO is seeking US$2 billion a year from the international community to help support Afghanistan’s security forces, the Financial Times (FT) reported yesterday.
NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told the paper that today’s conference on Afghanistan in The Hague was an opportunity to ask for pledges from outside the 26-member military alliance to help keep the country stable.
“The potential major donor states — Japan, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states — will all be in The Hague,” he said.
“I am not saying funding should come exclusively from those circles,” he said. “But it is difficult to see how NATO allies — given the enormous amounts they are spending keeping forces there — can bring in US$2 billion a year. It’s impossible for them.”
SUPPORT
So far the NATO fund required to sustain the 134,000 troops of the Afghan army contained only US$25 million, the FT reported him as saying.
The conference, to be opened by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and hosted by the Netherlands, the UN and Afghanistan, will be attended by representatives of almost 90 countries, groups and observers including Iran.
De Hoop Scheffer said the meeting “will deliver a powerful message that it is not only NATO, the United Nations and the European Union that are engaged in Afghanistan, but that a larger community is committed to its future.”
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