Italy to sustain civil society

Italian Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini has reiterated support to Afghan civil society and the government after the pullout.
For the first time an Italian foreign minister has gone on record to say

Italian Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini has reiterated support to Afghan civil society and the government after the pullout.
For the first time an Italian foreign minister has gone on record to say her country will not abandon Afghanistan after US-led NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) troops withdraw from combat duties by the end of the year.
Minister Mogherini talked about a new strategy that will be based on civil society cooperation.
She was responding to “five questions” addressed to her in the Italian national newspaper, Il Manifesto, from Afgana, an association based in Rome and committed to sustaining and consolidating Afghan civil society.
In her reply, published in the same newspaper, Minister Mogherini assured Afgana that programmes of civil cooperation would not be reduced but strengthened.
Regarding the country’s military mission she reiterated that some Italian soldiers will remain in the country and will be tasked with training their Afghan colleagues.
Mogherini was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Matteo Renzi government in February this year. She is only the third woman foreign minister of Italy.
The minister has promised she will soon go to Afghanistan to meet her counterpart and discuss with him the bilateral agreement that was signed between the two countries.
Minister Mogherini’s reply was well received by Afgana which has been working in Afghanistan since 2007. The association has been working through several local partners –The Killid Group among them- and has launched new programmes aimed at supporting and training local associations of civil society.
Two years ago Italy and Afghanistan signed a long-term strategic partnership agreement for after 2014. President Hamid Karzai and the then Italian Prime minister Mario Monti inked it in Rome in January 2012. The prime minister promised Italy’s responsibilities would not lessen with the pullout in 2014.
Eleven months later Monti also visited Kabul, where he assured his hosts Italy’s presence from 2015 would be based “less on military contributions”. He said, “It will be a presence based far more on economic cooperation, it will be cooperation on the exploration and use of Afghanistan’s important mineral resources and it will be a cooperation, as it already is in this phase, of institution-building to make Afghanistan an ever more solid country.”