NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Sunday that Russia and China should play a role in preventing terrorism from spreading in Afghanistan following the withdrawal of foreign troops.

“I strongly agree that the whole international community, including Russia and China, needs to work to prevent Afghanistan being a place where terrorist groups can operate freely and prepare, organize, plan, finance attacks against our own countries,” Stoltenberg told The Telegraph.

He acknowledged that the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul on August 15 was “of course… related to the fact that NATO allies decided to end this military mission in Afghanistan.” The last of the US forces departed Afghanistan in the early hours of August 31.

Stoltenberg welcomed more European efforts on defense and said that Europe and North America should maintain their bond.

“Any attempt to establish parallel structures, duplicate the command structure, that will weaken our joint capability to work together because with scarce resources we need to prevent duplication and overlapping efforts. The specific proposals have not been discussed in Nato, we have not seen any details,” the NATO secretary general said.

He admitted that after over 20 years of foreign investment in Afghan security, it was reasonable to expect that they would have been able to withstand the Taliban for a longer time.

Source: Agencies