Pusic was attending a meeting of NATO foreign and defence ministers on Wednesday and Thursday, with Afghanistan as one of its main topics.
She had several meetings on the margins of the two-day conference, including those with Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. They discussed future participation of Croatian military and civilian representatives in Afghanistan after the international peace mission withdraws in 2014. Croatia currently has a 350-strong contingent in Afghanistan who are mainly involved in training Afghan forces.
"In our opinion, a military presence should be combined with a civilian one, and Croatia wants to concentrate on the education, first and foremost, of women and girls, on the training of a group of women as midwives, which is a big problem in Afghanistan given a high death rate among newborn babies. We believe that the status of 15 million people, who happen to be women, is one of the main reasons why we are there. We should not allow those 15 million people to be sacrificed in a confusion of various other priorities and restrictions, because the status of women will to a large extent dictate the future of Afghanistan," Pusic said.
NATO plans to withdraw the bulk of its 130,000 troops deployed in Afghanistan by the end of 2014, leaving security responsibilities to the Afghan security forces. The role of NATO in Afghanistan after 2014 will be one of the topics of an alliance summit scheduled for May 20 and 21 in Chicago. The countries participating in the ISAF mission should finance part of the costs of the Afghan forces after they assume responsibility for their country.
Pusic said that the amount with which Croatia would financially support the Afghan forces after 2014 would be equal to the annual cost of sending three soldiers.