NATO meeting ends in Brussels

Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said NATO would have a quick-reaction force of about 4,000 troops by 2016, but would get an interim squad up and running in early 2015. The group would be especially tasked with heading off threats from Russia and elsewhere.

The group also approved maintaining measures designed to reassure NATO countries nearest to Russia, Stoltenberg said at the first meeting of the alliance's foreign ministers in Brussels since he took over as secretary-general from Anders Fogh Rasmussen on October 1. Such measures include stepped-up air patrols over the Baltic Sea and rotating NATO military units in and out of countries such as Poland and the Baltic republics.

"We are protecting our allies and supporting our partners," the Norwegian Stoltenberg said on Tuesday.

Ministers also activated funds to upgrade Ukraine's logistics, cyberwarfare preparedness, medical services, command and control operations, and support wounded soldiers. Earlier Tuesday, Ukraine's government and separatists announced a truce in the rebel stronghold of Luhansk. However, the ministers also pushed Russia to honor a wider peace deal agreed in September.

"Russia must use its influence over the separatists to ensure they stop their attacks and abide by the ceasefire," a joint statement from the ministers read.

'Ready and willing'

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani turned up to mark the end of NATO's combat role in his country. Stoltenberg has expressed confidence in Afghanistan's "strong, capable, well-trained" security forces, while recognizing that attacks by the Taliban and other groups will not end.

"Afghan security forces are ready and willing to assume our patriotic duty to defend our country and to safeguard the world," Ghani said Monday. Just hours before arriving in Brussels, the president had authorized Operation Resolute Support, a NATO force to train and support Afghanistan's military when the International Security Assistance Force concludes its mission at the end of December. The 12,500 troops for the operation will mostly come from the US, which initiated the 2001 war to overthrow the Taliban.

On Tuesday, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said that NATO had entered into "a new era in which we want to help stabilize Afghanistan further, to put the country in a position where it can take on more responsibility."

Despite the continued foreign security presence, many Afghans recently responded pessimistically to questions about the country's future in the wake of the long war.

mkg/mg (Reuters, AFP, dpa, AP)