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On May 10 North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg met with Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg at NATO headquarters in Brussels to sign an agreement on the opening of a NATO Liaison Office in Vienna.
The NATO chief thanked Austria for twenty-six years of military cooperation, beginning with Austria joining the Partnership for Peace program in 1995. In particular he expressed appreciation for the nation’s contribution to NATO’s International Security Assistance Force mission in Afghanistan, where its troops served with those of fifty-three other countries under NATO command. (Among the others were fellow European Union member states and NATO partners Ireland, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland. In 2014 Finland and Sweden were elevated to the status of Enhanced Opportunities Partners. The two nations were in charge of Mazar-i-Sharif in Balkh province where their troops engaged in combat operations while under NATO comm