Russia demands from NATO to report to UN SC about activities in Afghanistan - Churkin

UNITED NATIONS, December 4. /TASS/. NATO should give regular reports about its activities in Afghanistan to the UN Security Council /SC/, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin said on Wednesday specifying that the SC resolution on a mission successor to the International Security Assistance Forces /ISAF/ should include this demand. ISAF is a NATO-led security mission in Afghanistan whose authorization expires at the end of 2014. “We assume that the Security Council cannot just adopt the text /of the resolution/ and to let matters take care of themselves,” Churkin said. “It is crucial the SC will hear reports. But for some reason, the NATO countries are not willing to give guarantees that they will report all their steps to the Security Council.” “We believe that without these regular reports at the SC it will be rather strange to back up a decision and then just forget about it,” he said. Russia believes that it is “crucial” to adopt a resolution that would “support new agreements between NATO and Afghanistan,” Churkin said specifying that a necessary condition for this decision would be an assessment of ISAF activities. “Before we support a new operation, we should clarify the results of the previous one,” he said. “And at the moment we have no guarantees that we will get a substantive report, rather than a short notification that they have finished their work. An analysis is needed of what has been achieved and what has not.” Churkin pointed to “another problem” related to prolongation of the international forces’ stay in Afghanistan. Thus, the United States’ operation would not be reflected in the SC resolution as it was based on the bilateral agreements with Kabul and goes beyond the framework of an agreement on the forces’ status adopted by NATO and the Afghan authorities. “Moreover, the U.S. has supposedly changed its opinion,” the Russian envoy said. “First, it announced that it would not participate in the combat operations beyond the end of the current year, but now reports are coming that they see the possibility of conducting military operations.” “In this context I’d like to ask a question whether NATO will abide by the announced mandate,” Churkin said. “To my mind, there are lots of ambiguities and open questions for us to say with confidence now whether the Security Council will adopt this resolution.” On November 2 NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that from January 1, 2015 a NATO new 12,000-strong mission of instructors and trainers would be deployed in Afghanistan. Last week the U.S. media outlets reported that President Barack Obama signed a secret order that allows the Pentagon to use the U.S. forces in direct hostilities in Afghanistan. Read more