NATO summit: Afghans demand $4.1 bln a year

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NATO summit: Afghans demand $4.1 bln a year

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Afghanistan will strongly oppose any conditions being set on the funding, an official said.

17 May,2012 11:06 am

Afghanistan goes to the NATO summit in Chicago on Sunday with a firm demand for $4.1 billion a year for its security forces after Western troops pull out in 2014 -- and insists it is not charity.Afghanistan, fearing a new civil war or military advances by hardline Islamist insurgents following the withdrawal, sees the cash as an investment in the Wests own security against terrorism.This is not charity, Afghanistan is and will be on the frontline of the worlds fight against terrorism, Deputy Foreign Minister Jawed Ludin told foreign journalists ahead of the summit.We Afghans will be making sacrifices for years to come in what is essentially an international war.After the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the United States led an invasion of Afghanistan to topple the Taliban regime for harbouring Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden -- and NATO still has some 130,000 troops fighting an insurgency.But with the long war increasingly unpopular in the West, NATO has set 2014 as the deadline for pulling its combat troops out, while training some 350,000 Afghan security forces to take over the fight.US President Barack Obama flew to Kabul at the beginning of May to sign a Strategic Partnership Agreement with President Hamid Karzai, covering relations between the two countries until 2024.But the pact does not specify the funding to be provided for the Afghan army and paramilitary forces -- and Kabul is looking to the Chicago summit to set the $4.1 billion dollars a year in stone.