BRUSSELS
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has ratified a Bilateral Security Agreement with the U.S. and a Status of Forces Agreement with NATO, which will allow foreign troops to stay in Afghanistan beyond 2014.
President Ghani and Chief Executive Officer Abdullah Abdullah held a joint press conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Brussels on Monday.
''We now have in place what we need to move forward with our mission to train, advise and assist the Afghan security forces and build on our common achievements,'' Stoltenberg said.
The Taliban have long condemned all such agreements that allow foreign forces to stay in Afghanistan and assist the Afghan National Security Forces from January 1, 2015.
The ratification comes after an overwhelming majority of the lower house of the Afghan parliament, 152 lawmakers, voted in favor of the agreement while five lawmakers opposed it and six others walked out as voting took place on Nov 23. The upper house approved the deals on Thursday last week.
Afghan President Ghani said: ''Afghan forces are ready to assume patriotic duty to protect country on Jan. 1 2015; we look to the new phase of partnership, which has been earned through much sacrifice and shared responsibility.''
Chief Executive Officer Abdullah said: ''Afghanistan is a different place, terror groups lost capacity to launch attacks like 9/11, but the scope for changing the environment not only for Afghanistan but the region is much greater than we can imagine.''
A suicide bombing at a crowded funeral killed nine people in the Baghlan province north of Kabul on Monday, according to Afghan official Taj Mohammed Taqwa.
Taliban stepping up its attacks across Afghanistan has raised fears about whether the Afghan security force will be able to protect the country.
The number of American soldiers is expected to be cut in half by the end of 2015 while around 9,800 U.S. soldiers are expected to remain deployed in the country to train local Afghan forces.
www.aa.com.tr/en
