The foreign ministers of NATO are meeting March 23-24 in Brussels. One of the major topics on their agenda is Afghanistan, where the other 29 allies are waiting for a U.S. decision on whether to pull troops out of the country by May 1. Speaking about Afghanistan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during a joint press appearance with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg this morning: “We went in together, we have adjusted together, and when the time is right we’ll leave together. There’s a common theme or common word, and that’s ‘together.’”
Stoltenberg said that the intra-Afghan peace talks in Doha, as fragile as they are, “are the only path to a lasting political solution in Afghanistan. And therefore we strongly support and welcome the renewed efforts by the United States, by Secretary Blinken, to create progress, to reenergize the peace talks, because that’s the only way to reach a lasting solution.”