POLITICIAN: DEPLOYMENT OF A PART OF ISAF CONTINGENT IN AZERBAIJAN IS SCARCELY PROBABLE
ARMINFO
Tuesday, February 26, 16:59
Deployment of a part of the International Security Assistance Force
(ISAF) contingent in Azerbaijan is scarcely probable, Kiro Manoyan,
Head of ARFD Bureau for Hay Dat and Political Affairs Office,
told ArmInfo.
He is convinced that NATO will not leave its troops in Azerbaijan
secretly, without publishing relevant information about that. Manoyan
does not rule out that some of these forces may stay in Azerbaijan
for 1 or 2 days, but no longer. Therefore, any opposite information
published at various levels is just supposition, he said.
In the meantime, considering the US troops’ possible participation
in various peacekeeping operations in the Karabakh conflict zone,
Manoyan said that their participation without being coordinated with
the other co-chair countries of the OSCE Minsk Group is ruled out. The
politician stressed that Washington may take some steps aimed at
improving the relations with Baku. However, the USA is unlikely to
make something running counter to its positions, which may lead to
its refusal from the principle of people’s self- determination.
The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), also known as the
coalition forces, is a NATO-led security mission in Afghanistan that
was established by the United Nations Security Council in December
2001 by Resolution 1386, as envisaged by the Bonn Agreement. Its
main purpose is to train the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF)
and assist Afghanistan in rebuilding key government institutions but
is also engaged in the 2001-present war with insurgent groups. In
October 2003, the UN Security Council authorized the expansion of the
ISAF mission throughout Afghanistan, and ISAF subsequently expanded
the mission in four main stages over the whole of the country. From
2006 to 2011, ISAF had been involved in increasingly more intensive
combat operations in southern and eastern Afghanistan.
At the moment ISAF includes detachments of 48 countries. On June 6
2011 ISAF had 132457 servicemen. At present there are about 70,000
US military servicemen in Afghanistan. They will leave the country
in late 2014.
From: Baghdasarian