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Summary Merkel and Karzai are due to sign a bilateral cooperation agreement at the meeting.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai will hold talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin next week ahead of a NATO summit in the United States, her spokesman said on Friday.Merkel and Karzai are due to sign a bilateral cooperation agreement at the meeting on Wednesday, as well as discuss the May 20-21 summit in Chicago, Steffen Seibert said. The discussion, of course, will prepare for the upcoming NATO summit in Chicago as well as a further meeting in July in Tokyo about Afghanistans civilian reconstruction, Seibert told a regular government news conference.The chancellor and Afghan president will sign a bilateral cooperation agreement that deals with the future cooperation of the two countries, he added.Merkel called in a speech to German lawmakers on Thursday for the timetable laid out by NATO for international troops to withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2014 to be respected. It followed a campaign pledge by French president-elect Francois Hollande, whom she is to meet here on Tuesday, to withdraw Frances combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year.Afghan forces are gradually taking over control of security in the country, with the goal of being in the lead nationwide next year and enabling most of the 130,000 foreign troops to leave by the end of 2014. Germany is the third biggest troop supplier after the United States and Britain.
