Blinken, Austin to brief NATO on Afghan withdrawal plan

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin will meet senior officials from the alliances 30 members on Wednesday to discuss how to coordinate the withdrawal of NATO forces in concert with the departure of the remaining American troops.

President Joe Biden's top national security aides are briefing NATO about US plans to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of the Sept 11 terrorist attacks. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin will meet senior officials from the alliance's 30 members on Wednesday to discuss how to coordinate the withdrawal of NATO forces in concert with the departure of the remaining American troops. The coalition operation in Afghanistan has special resonance with NATO as its deployment marked the first time the alliance invoked its Article 5 mutual defense pact, which holds that an attack on one member is an attack on all. Biden is to formally announce his withdrawal plans later Wednesday in Washington, according to senior officials who previewed the move on Tuesday. Blinken and NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg kicked off Wednesday's meetings at NATO headquarters in Brussels by recalling the alliance's success in driving Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network from Afghanistan. But Blinken also maintained the allies would not abandon the country despite the impending pullout.

"Together, we went into Afghanistan to deal with those who attacked us and to make sure that Afghanistan would not again become a haven for terrorists who might attack any of us," Blinken said. "And together, we have achieved the goals that we we set out to achieve. And now it is time to bring our forces home." Blinken noted the mantra that has guided NATO's Resolute Support mission has been "in together, adapt together, and out together." "We will work very closely together in the weeks and months ahead on a safe, deliberate and coordinated withdrawal of our forces from Afghanistan," he said.

Stoltenberg said that the meetings would be focused on ''our future presence in Afghanistan" and that the alliance, which makes decisions on the basis of consensus, could be expected to make those plans known in the near future.

Even before the group meetings began, it appeared that consensus on withdrawal was at hand. German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said NATO members were likely to decide to join the U.S. in pulling out their troops by Sept 11.

"We have always said: We go in together, we go out together," she told Germany's ARD television. "I am in favor of an orderly withdrawal." Germany, which currently has some 1,000 troops in Afghanistan, has always said that it would no longer be able to maintain a presence there if the US were to leave.

Biden's decision to withdraw troops by fall defies a May 1 deadline for full withdrawal under a peace agreement the Trump administration reached with the Taliban last year, but it leaves no room for additional extensions. It sets a firm end to two decades of war that killed more than 2,200 US troops, wounded 20,000 and cost as much as USD 1 trillion.

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