NATO requests more troops for Afghanistan

NATO's secretary-general made a short announcement to the press on May 10 in which he confirmed that the organization was requesting that its member states deploy more troops to Afghanistan, but ruled out a return to military combat in that country.

Jens Stoltenberg spoke following a meeting with the United Kingdom Prime Minister Theresa May at her official 10 Downing Street residence in London, where the two leaders were preparing the groundwork ahead of a Brussels NATO meeting scheduled for May 25.

Stoltenberg said military authorities would use the summit to debate NATO's petition to deploy several thousand additional troops to Afghanistan.

Exact figures would be thrashed out in the coming weeks, the NATO chief said, adding that extra soldiers would not be deployed in a combative military capacity, but would rather provide training to the Afghan forces on the ground.

Some 13,500 NATO troops stayed on as advisers in the Central Asian nation when the Alliance officially ended its military intervention against the Taliban and Al-Qaida in 2014, some 12 years after the operation was launched.

Also read: US officials want to deploy 5,000 more troops to Afghanistan

The war in Afghanistan was nonetheless ongoing.

Stoltenberg said that national defense contributions would be scrutinized during the Brussels summit.

NATO has asked its members to invest 2 percent of their GDP into defense spending.

There were two new heads of state for whom the forthcoming summit was set to be their first NATO outing; United States President Donald Trump and Emmanual Macron, who is due to officially take French presidency on May 14.