US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has met a Georgian peacekeeping group in Afghanistan at the Shukvani base in Helmand Province, Georgia Online reports.
Panetta thanked Georgians for their part in the ISAF mission. He addressed the 31st infantry battalion and read a letter of Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Tugush, an officer undergoing treatment at the National Military Medical Center of Walter reed in Bethesda. He was visited by Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and US leader Barack Obama later on March 2.
The Pentagon reported that Panetta’s plane was attacked at Camp Bastion in southern Afghanistan. Military spokesman John Kirby said that Panetta had to return to Kabul.
