German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung said Saturday that cooperation between NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and non-NATO nations are urgently needed to maintain an effective cooperation in Afghanistan.
"We have to develop a comprehensive concept of security network," Jung told a group of high-profile diplomats at a key security conference in the southern German city of Munich that opened on Friday.
The minister underlined the coordination between the European and NATO defense systems.
"The two systems are established together, not against each other," said Jung.
Jung also called for more intensive cooperation between NATO and the United Nations in Afghanistan.
NATO has reportedly been struggling to plug holes in the military missions in Afghanistan where security concerns have intensified recently.
Canada has threatened to pull out its soldiers unless European allies such as France and Germany send additional troops to southern Afghanistan.
Germany has bluntly rejected a request from the United States to offer more troops in the more volatile southern Afghanistan. Jung said that the German soldiers should continue to focus their missions in northern Afghanistan.
Some 3,000 German troops, the third biggest contributor after the United States and Britain, are currently deployed in the relatively peaceful northern Afghanistan under the 43,000-strong NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
The annual three-day security meeting is scheduled to discuss a range of the world's most thorny issues. It was attended by high-profile diplomats including NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana this year.
Source: Xinhua
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