According to Press TV, Nikolay Korchunov, Russia’s acting ambassador to NATO, said on Wednesday that the alliance must receive an international mandate, which means a new UN Security Council resolution, for a longer stay in Afghanistan.
Korchunov said “Let’s proceed from the assumption that any such mission should be based on an international mandate.”
He said “It is a pre-condition both for carrying on the operation and for our cooperation with NATO on that issue post-2014.”
However, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said earlier on Wednesday that the military alliance is in “no rush” for the withdrawal of US-led foreign soldiers from Afghanistan.
Russia will be a strategic transit route for NATO as it withdraws billions of dollars of equipment from Afghanistan in the next few years.
On September 22, Russian Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin said Moscow wants to know the purpose of foreign military bases in Afghanistan after the US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) pulls out of the country in 2014.
