http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/opinions_61136.htm?selectedLocale=en
North Atlantic Treaty Organization February 1, 2010 Monthly press conference by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen ...You are all familiar with the conclusions of last week’s conference in London. I don’t want go over them again. But I do want to make one initial point on Afghanistan. I saw a lot of reports last year that the international community was losing the will to carry out his mission. Or that unity in NATO was fracturing. Or that there was no clear strategy. After important decisions taken these last couple of months we see a new momentum: In London, almost 70 countries made clear commitments not only to maintain their support for Afghanistan, but in many cases to step it up. Almost 40 out of 44 countries in the ISAF mission have now made offers to send fresh forces to the operation, getting us close to the 40,000 that General McChrystal assesses he needs. .... Of course, Afghanistan will be front and centre on the agenda later this week in Istanbul, at the meeting of Defence Ministers, where we will discuss how to take forward our strategy. .... Of course, there are other issues on the agenda at our meeting in Istanbul. One of those is transformation, and I see the discussion in Istanbul on transformation as part of the process of developing the new Strategic Concept, of which transformation will be a very important part. .... I’m going to focus Ministers attention on three areas where I think we could do more multinationally: Counter IED (Improvised Explosive Devices) – and SACT, General Abrial, will present some proposals Medical facilities Helicopters These are all areas where we can make progress, and where we should make progress by pulling resources and pursuing multi-national solutions. =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato Blog site: http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/ To subscribe, send an e-mail to: rwroz...@yahoo.com or stopnato-subscr...@yahoogroups.com Daily digest option available. ==============================
