1. A plenary meeting of the Afghan National Army Trust Fund (ANATF) Board was held at the NATO Headquarters in Brussels at 15:00, local time, and 22:00, Korea Standard Time, on October 19 in both face-to-face and virtual formats.

° Ambassador of the Republic of Korea to the Kingdom of Belgium and the European Union Yoon Soongu and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, in their capacity as co-chairs, presided over the meeting that brought together a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense of the United States, the Commander of the Combined Security Transition Command–Afghanistan (CSTC-A), the Deputy Minister of Defense of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, and delegates from 28 NATO member states and donor countries to ANATF.

2. The participants welcomed that the Afghan government and the Taliban had recently begun intra-Afghan negotiations in order to establish peace and reaffirmed their plan to continue rendering support to the Afghan military and police until 2024, the point when the Afghan government had promised to start standing on its own. In addition, the special envoy of the Republic of Finland to the 2020 Afghanistan Conference, which will be co-hosted by the Afghan government, the Finnish government and the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), briefed on the progress in the preparations for the Conference.

° Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Kim Young-chae, who attended the meeting as delegate of the ROK government, mentioned that the ROK plans to continue contributing to ANATF until 2024, underscored the need to consult on ANATF’s operational plan in line with the progress in the Afghan peace process, and took note that a Korean company had successfully advanced into NATO’s procurement market for the first time in history.

3. The ROK, as a responsible middle power country of the international community, dispatched the Dongui and Dasan Units in 2002-2007, ran a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in 2010-2014, and provided bilateral official development assistance (ODA) and financial aid in 2011 and on, in a bid to help establish stability and peace in Afghanistan.

4. The ROK government will continue to take part in the international community’s efforts to establish stability and peace in Afghanistan.