US pledges ‘to stand by’ Afghanistan

PRESIDENT Barack Obama pledged yesterday that US forces would stand by Afghanistan even after Nato-led troops hand control of the fight against Taliban insurgents to Afghan forces in 2014.

Far from the dusty battlefields of Afghanistan, where more than 2,200 Allied troops have fallen in a vicious nine-year-old war, Obama and Nato leaders flew in to Lisbon for a two-day summit to set a handover date.

“We’ll announce that the transition to Afghan responsibility is about to start, in 2011. We hope this process will be completed by 2014,” Nato secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, told reporters as the leaders arrived.