Any international peacekeeping force in Afghanistan must first be approved by a UN Security Council resolution, Italian foreign minister Renato Ruggiero said on Sunday. “We must first have the resolution and know which states will be participating,” Ruggiero said after talks in Rome with the UN's special Afghanistan envoy Lakhdar Brahimi. “We also have to know what the mission's mandate will? be,” Ruggiero said. “Italy would be willing to participate in a multinational force operating within a UN framework but has not yet taken an official decision,” he said.
He said that the international community first needed to be sure that the Afghan government-to-be hammered out at talks in Germany last week takes power in Kabul as scheduled by December 22.
Bureau Report