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Defense Secretary Jim Mattis declined to discuss timeframes for the mission in Afghanistan after meeting with defense ministers in Brussels on Thursday over the future of America's longest war.

"I don't put timelines on wars, it's that simple," Mattis told reporters. "War is a fundamentally unpredictabe phenomenon, and every effort to create a pat answer to something like that is probably going to fail."

Mattis is using his time in Brussels to discuss NATO commitments for the fight in Afghanistan as he prepares a plan for the next phase of the war. He'll also use information gathered from Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joe Dunford, who visited Afghanistan this week.

On Thursday, Mattis was asked to respond to Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats' testimony before lawmakers last month, in which he said the situation in Afghanistan "will almost certainly deteriorate" through 2018.

Coats told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee that the deterioration will continue "even with a modest increase in military assistance by the United States and its partners."

Mattis said of the comments "They're entitled to their assessment," adding that it's more important to ask what would happen if the U.S. pulled its troops from the country.

"You can't say, 'well I got tired of it so I'm going to come home' and wonder why you get hit again. We've all seen the results of leaving ungoverned areas. What is the price of not fighting this war, and in this case we're not willing to pay that price."

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Jim Mattis on Afghanistan: 'I don't put timelines on wars' - Washington Examiner

CFB TRENTON, Ont. The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwallwill start the second day of their royal tour atCFB Trenton in eastern Ontario, where the couplewill meet members of the military and honour soldiers who lost their livesin Afghanistan.

Prince Charlesis also expected towatch asearch and rescuedemonstrationand visit military families while the Duchess of Cornwall will meet with aregiment the Queen's Own Rifles.

The couple will also attend a commemoration service and participate in a wreath laying at the Afghanistan Repatriation Memorial near the base.

Between 2001 and 2014, 158 members of the Canadian Armed Forces lost their lives in Afghanistan.

Gov. Gen. David Johnston alsoannounced this morning that the Prince of Wales has been appointed to the extraordinary companion category of the Order of Canada for supporting Canadian charitable activitiesas well as themen and women in the Canadian Armed Forces.

Later in the day, Charlesand Camilla will visitWellington Farmer's Market in Prince Edward County, where they will meet vendors and artisansand stop in at a local winery.

The Canadian Press

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Prince of Wales, wife Camilla to honour soldiers who died in Afghanistan - rdnewsnow.com

Last week, Islamic State fighters overran all of Darzab, according to the acting district governor, Baz Mohammad Dawar. Government officials were able to regain control of the districts center, but not most of the rest of the territory; 10 police officers or soldiers were killed in the fight, he said.

With the districts clinic under Islamic State control, 15 patients were evacuated to the capital of Jowzjan Province, Sheberghan, but they died en route, Afghan officials said.

Mohammad Reza Ghafori, the spokesman for the provincial governor, said that Islamic State fighters had destroyed the 50-bed clinic, forcing the patients to flee.

Mr. Dawar said he thought the patients had died of their injuries on the rugged journey because of a lack of medical staff members in the area. Other officials said it seemed likely that the fighters, who controlled the area the patients had to travel through, had killed them.

In the village of Betaw in Darzab, Islamic State militants killed seven local police officers and 15 civilians, according to a local elder, and threatened to kill anyone who held funeral ceremonies for them. Some held them anyway.

We live in a state of fear, the elder said by telephone. All of us who participated in the funeral are now scared that ISIS will attack and kill us. The elder spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared retaliation by militants. It was not clear if the seven police officers were counted among the 10 cited by the governor, or if they were additional casualties.

ISIS is more powerful than the Taliban were in Darzab because their fighters are brave, said Hajji Obaidullah, the former police chief of the district. He and other local officials said that two former Taliban commanders, Qari Hikmat and Mufti Nemat, had combined forces and switched their allegiance to the Islamic State in recent months. He said the government had rushed in hundreds of reinforcements, in the form of police officers and soldiers from other areas, to keep the district center from falling to insurgents.

There is no Taliban in Darzab now, but only ISIS, said Halima Sadaf, a member of the Jowzjan Provincial Council, who is from Darzab.

They took over the district before Eid al-Fitr, she said, referring to the holiday signifying the end of Ramadan that began on Sunday.

But Afghan national security forces pushed them out of the capital of the district; the rest of the district is all with them, she added. They are strong and regrouping to launch another offensive.

One of the Islamic State commanders, Mufti Nemat, was persuaded last year to quit the Taliban and join the government side after a heavily publicized intervention by General Dostum, the first vice president. Mufti Nemat was previously a religious teacher in General Dostums home village. He later accused the government and General Dostum of reneging on promises made to him, announcing that he was joining forces with Qari Hikmat and would support the Islamic State.

Spokesmen for General Dostum and for the Taliban both confirmed that Mr. Nemat had left the Taliban, joined General Dostums side, but then gone over to the ISIS camp. Nemat is a threat for the government. He knows the Darzab District and the area very well; he is a very dangerous guy, said Enayatullah Babur Farahmand, General Dostums chief of staff. He blamed government inaction for alienating Mr. Nemat.

Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman who was reached via WhatsApp, said both local leaders who had joined ISIS had been rejected by the Taliban. Qari Hikmat, Mr. Mujahid said, had been sentenced to prison by the Taliban on corruption charges but he escaped and joined ISIS.

The Islamic State in Khorasan, as the group is known in Afghanistan, has generally been active only in the eastern province of Nangarhar, where fighters are locked in a struggle with the government as well as with local Taliban forces. Taking a district elsewhere in the country would be a significant advance for the group.

Jawad Sukhanyar reported from Kabul and Rod Nordland from London. Fahim Abed contributed reporting from Kabul.

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ISIS, Aided by Ex-Taliban Groups, Makes Inroads in Northern ... - New York Times

BRUSSELS European allies will tell U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis on Thursday they are willing to help step up NATO's mission in Afghanistan - but only if the United States is clear on its strategy, diplomats said.

The United States wants to send 3,000-5,000 more troops to Afghanistan, and other NATO members might send around 1,200.

While no decisions have been made, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said U.S. allies would send more troops to help Afghans "break the stalemate" with resurgent Taliban rebels.

As part of the broader efforts, Britain will send just under 100 additional troops Secretary of Defense Michael Fallon said as he arrived for a meeting of his NATO counterparts.

"We are in it for the long haul, it's a democracy that has asked for our help and it is important that Europe responds," Fallon said.

"Transnational terror groups that operate in Afghanistan are a threat to us in Western Europe and to the continued existence of the Afghan state."

NATO leads some 13,450 multinational troops in Afghanistan, who are training the country's armed forces. About 8,400 are U.S. personnel, some 6,900 of whom come under the NATO command structure.

Fifteen members and partners of the military alliance have said they will contribute more troops and equipment to the training mission for 2018, following a closed-door meeting of military planners this month.

"This is nothing like a surge, this is well within the bounds of what is feasible politically," a senior NATO diplomat said, citing a willingness to meet U.S. President Donald Trump's demands that the alliance do more to fight Islamist militants.

A decision by NATO allies to send more troops would reflect alarm about territorial gains by Taliban rebels and military and civilian casualties.

However, diplomats said everything hung on the Afghan strategy being devised by Mattis, who will address NATO defense ministers later on Thursday, partly because many allies depend on U.S. equipment to be able to carry out their training.

"We need clarity from the United States," a second NATO diplomat said.

Some diplomats expressed frustration that the process had dragged out months, saying they had been repeatedly promised the new U.S. strategy, firstly by the NATO leaders' meeting in May in Brussels and then by Thursday's defense ministers' meeting.

"The confusion in Washington has had an impact," a third diplomat said.

"HOW WE END THIS WAR"

The concern about delay extends beyond Brussels. In Washington, Republican Senator John McCain recently scolded Mattis during a televised Senate hearing.

"It makes it hard for us to support you when we don't have a strategy," McCain said.

U.S. and allied forces have been fighting for nearly 16 years against Taliban Islamists who harbored al Qaeda militants behind the attacks on New York and Washington in September 2001.

For Mattis, the NATO trip will bring him one step closer to an expected mid-July finish line for his long-awaited Afghan war plan, which he hopes will break a stalemate in America's longest war and eventually bring it to a successful conclusion.

Speaking to reporters during his flight to Europe, he said he would brief allies about the U.S. assessment of the situation in Afghanistan and his efforts to fill in "any gaps left in the strategy".

He declined to say how many troops he expected from NATO allies.

Mattis said he aimed to return to Washington to "finish out some things" in consultation with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine General Joseph Dunford, who just returned from Afghanistan, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

"And then we'll present to the president a strategy that's been informed by our allies, to include Afghanistan of course, and given a framework that is regional in nature and focuses on: how we end this war," he said.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Robin Emmott,; editing by Andrew Roche and Ed Osmond)

SYDNEY/VATICAN CITY Cardinal George Pell, a top adviser to Pope Francis, said on Thursday he was innocent of charges of sexual abuse in his native Australia, and that the pontiff had given him leave of absence to return there to defend himself.

WARSAW A trip to Poland by U.S. President Donald Trump next week may feel like a diplomatic coup for the right-wing government, but western European nations are uneasy it will encourage Warsaw's defiance towards Brussels.

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What next in Afghanistan? Europe seeks US leadership - Reuters

Irans speaker of parliament has criticized NATO, saying it is neither brave enough nor serious enough to eliminate terrorism in Afghanistan.

In a meeting with Afghan Parliament Speaker Abdul Rauf Ibrahimi on Tuesday, on the sidelines of the Second Meeting of Eurasian Parliament Speakers,the Speaker of Iran's Parliament, Ali Larijani,said that it was unnecessary for foreign troops to be in the country and that Afghanistan was capable of fighting terrorism on its own.

IRNA, Irans state news agency, said Larijani stated that NATO is in Afghanistan under the pretext of fighting terrorism but that their protracted presence in the country reveals that NATO is neither brave to fight terrorism nor is it serious in this respect.

Larijani also reportedly said that Iran will help Afghanistan in its fight against terrorism but that Tehran believes that reorganizing Afghan forces to fight terrorism is essential.

IRNA stated that Larijani said Iran underlines the need for unity among Afghan political forces because gaps among the forces will have plenty of negative impacts.

Condemning the recent twin terrorist attacks in Tehran, Ibrahimi said that Afghanistan is seeking a suitable solution to tackle terrorism so as to ensure it will not spread to neighboring states.

Larijani and Ibrahimi arrived in Seoul on Monday to Attend the Second Meeting of Eurasian Parliament Speakers.

First round of the event was held in Moscow last year with parliamentary officials of 20 countries in attendance.

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Afghanistan Capable Of Fighting Terrorists On Its Own: Iran - TOLOnews