"NATO Chief: Afghans Begin Control This Year"

NATO Chief: Afghans Begin Control This Year
By AP / ROBERT BURNS Friday, Apr. 23, 2010

(TALLINN, Estonia) — NATO's top official says the alliance intends to start handing over responsibility for Afghanistan to the Afghan government this year.
The process is to be well under way by the summer of 2011, when President Barack Obama has said U.S. troops will begin coming home.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told a news conference Friday at the conclusion of a two-day meeting of allied foreign ministers — including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton — that they agreed on a general approach to transitioning to Afghan control.

He said the plan for transition of control is to be endorsed at an international conference in Kabul in July and by a NATO summit meeting in November.

Fogh Rasmussen said the 28-nation alliance is on track with its new strategy for winding down the war in Afghanistan next year, despite security setbacks and a continuing shortage of foreign trainers for the fledgling Afghan police and army. "Increasingly this year the momentum will be ours," he said.

Fogh Rasmussen asserted that the Afghan government, which has been hampered by a Taliban insurgency, political corruption, a dysfunctional economy and a dependence on foreign assistance, is starting to take more responsibility for running the country's affairs.

"We are preparing to begin the process of handing over leadership, where conditions allow, back to the Afghan people," he said. "The future of this mission is clear and visible: more Afghan capability and more Afghan leadership."

During Friday's meeting, which was closed to the press after Fogh Rasmussen made brief introductory remarks, Clinton was expected to press other NATO nations to provide more trainers for Afghanistan's police and military forces as part of preparations to withdraw Western troops from there by summer 2011.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1984043,00.html