U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will host a meeting in Brussels on Wednesday with President Hamid Karzai and Defense Minister Bismillah Khan Mohammadi of Afghanistan, and Army Chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and Foreign Secretary Jalil Abbas Jilani of Pakistan. The meeting will try to foster cooperation over the stalled reconciliation process with the Taliban and other thorny issues, American and Afghan officials said Monday. The meeting will be held the day after NATO foreign ministers gather to discuss the alliance's role in Afghanistan after 2014, among other issues. “This is the year of transition," Kerry told a gathering of American diplomats, referring to NATO's plans to progressively hand over the responsibility for security by the end of 2014. “This is the critical year in Afghanistan." He added, “We are going to have a trilateral (meeting) and try to talk about how we can advance this process in the simplest, most cooperative, most cogent way so that we wind up with both Pakistan's and Afghanistan's interests being satisfied - but most importantly with a stable and peaceful Afghanistan."
