Afghan govt says to decide how long NATO troops stay

A French soldier from the NATO forces keeps watch as Afghan women and their children arrive to attend a free medical assistance camp by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in the outskirts of Kabul April 3, 2008.

KABUL (Reuters) - The Afghan government will decide when foreign troops will leave the country, the foreign minister said on Tuesday, but added they would be needed until Afghan security forces could stand on their own feet.

"Whenever ... the Afghan security forces and its national army acquire the ability to defend this water and soil against international terrorism and foreign interventions, there will be no need for the presence of international military forces in Afghanistan," Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta told a news conference.

"And the government of Afghanistan itself will specify as to when and who needs to be (here) or go," Spanta replied when asked by a reporter whether the government had set any time frame for the withdrawal of foreign troops from the country.

Currently some 60,000 foreign troops led by NATO and the U.S. military are stationed in Afghanistan where the al Qaeda-backed Taliban movement has made a comeback since 2006.

And the number of Western-trained and funded Afghan security forces fighting against the militants stands at nearly 150,000.

The Taliban are mostly active in southern and eastern areas along the border with Pakistan where the militants have bases and sanctuaries in lawless tribal areas, dominated by ethnic Pashtuns who form the bulk of the Taliban.

U.S.-led forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001 and toppled Taliban's Islamist government after its leadership refused to hand over al Qaeda chief, Osama bin Laden, the architect of Sept 11 attacks on the United States.

Top Taliban and al Qaeda leaders, including bin Laden, are still at large.

Some Western officials have said the foreign troops will remain in Afghanistan for a long time but have not specified any withdrawal period. Others say the troops will leave the country when the Afghan forces manage to defend the country.

More than 12,000 people have been killed in the past two years in Afghanistan, the bloodiest period since Taliban's ouster.

In the latest incident, two foreign soldiers, one of them British, were killed in two separate attacks in southern Afghanistan on Monday.

(Reporting by Sayed Salahuddin, editing by Valerie Lee)