KABUL, 19 February 2004 — NATO needs to take a bigger security role in Afghanistan if there is to be any hope of the country holding its first-ever elections on time, EU External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten said yesterday.
Talk has increased in the international community about delaying the June presidential vote because of huge security worries, especially in the lawless provinces, and a voter registration drive that is less than 10 percent completed. NATO, which runs the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), has said it plans on expanding the 6,400-strong peacekeeping body, but no timetable has been set.
“With fewer than a million registered and we need to register 10 to 11 million, so of course security matters,” Patten told reporters at the end of a two-day visit to Kabul.
“And I very much hope that will be taken into account by NATO planners and the rest of the international community,” he said. “I think ISAF are doing a terrific job, it would obviously help if they were able to establish more provincial reconstruction teams, but that is a question for NATO.”
ISAF mostly polices Kabul but has set up one reconstruction team in Kundez in the northeast. Such teams carry out small-scale aid work and provide security for larger projects.
Stabilizing the countryside is key to increasing voter registration and putting an infrastructure in place to hold a fair vote, but Afghanistan is experiencing its worst period of violence since the ouster of the Taleban in late 2001, with more than 550 people killed since early August.
Patten said he was hopeful that if the security situation improved the election could be held as near as possible to June.
Accompanied by Irish Foreign Minister Brian Cowen and Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Rudolf Bot, the commissioner held meetings with President Hamid Karzai and signed an agreement that gave the European Commission full diplomatic status.
Children Kidnapped
Six children who have gone missing from their homes in the north of Afghanistan are believed to have been kidnapped by a child smuggling ring, an official said.
