DW: NATO Failings Led To Attacks by Taliban

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has accused NATO of failing to prevent the multiple attacks staged by the Taliban insurgents across Afghanistan on Sunday. NATO says the attacks will not affect its long-term exit planning. The Taliban's coordinated attacks that gripped Afghanistan on Sunday lay bare intelligence failures by both NATO and Afghan troops, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said on Monday. "The terrorists' infiltration in Kabul and other provinces is an intelligence failure for us and especially for NATO and should be seriously investigated," said Karzai in a statement. But Karzai lauded what he called the "bravery and sacrifice of the security forces who quickly and timely reacted to contain the terrorists." "Afghan security forces proved to the people that they can defend their country successfully," he added. NATO: no changes to the plan. Meanwhile, NATO was adamant that the attacks will not affect the 2014 deadline for the withdrawal of foreign troops. "Clearly we still security challenges," NATO spokeswoman Ona Lungescu said at a news briefing. "This was not the first such attack and I do not expect it to be the last." "But such attacks don't change the transition strategy, they don't change the goal and they don't change the timeline that we all agreed to at the Lisbon summit in November 2o10, she insisted. Ban: strengthen counter-terrorism. The United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon also emphatically decried on Monday the Taliban insurgency, adding that it had exposed the need to beef up the country's security forces. Ban condemned "in the strongest possible terms" the siege, warning: "We need to strengthen the capacity of counter-terrorism efforts and of Afghan security." "These issues will be discussed in detail at the forthcoming NATO summit in May" he told reporters at a press conference in Brussels.