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Rice, UK to hold terror talks
01/02/2008 21:26 - (SA)
Washington - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will visit Britain next week for high-stakes talks on Afghanistan amid US fears its NATO allies could abandon a strategic cornerstone of its "war on terror".
The trip was announced after Canada warned it could withdraw its 2 500 troops there if NATO fails to send reinforcements to the battle-ravaged south, a risk that appeared higher with Germany's refusal to deploy its forces there.
Rice will leave Washington on Tuesday for talks the next day with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Foreign Secretary David Miliband about Afghanistan as well as Iraq and Iran, her spokesperson Sean McCormack said.
McCormack said Afghanistan will figure high on the agenda as he conceded there is "a risk the clock could be turned back on the gains" made since the Taliban and al-Qaeda were toppled after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Britain is the staunchest US ally in Afghanistan, which last year endured its bloodiest year since the ousting of the Taliban.
Rice, in particular over the last few months, has been "looking at our efforts in Afghanistan, making sure we have the right resources matched up with the right strategy," McCormack said.
Masking the tension
He masked the tension that reportedly exists behind the scenes when he did not give a direct reply to Germany's rejection of an urgent US call to deploy combat troops against a resurgent Taliban in the southern Kandahar region.
"It's going to be up to the individual states to make decisions about the allocation of resources, whether to allocate resources, how they're going to participate in the mission," he said.
Nor would he comment directly on a report that US Defence Secretary Robert Gates sent an "unusually stern" letter to Germany last month demanding combat troops, helicopters and paratroopers for Afghanistan and charging that some NATO states were not pulling their weight.
But McCormack said: "I won't make a secret of the fact that we are encouraging all of our NATO allies to do everything they can in terms of contributing resources."
Commanders in Afghanistan have been calling for around 7 500 extra troops to be deployed in southern Afghanistan. The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) comprises some 42 000 troops from 39 countries.
Increased presence
In the last year, Britain has increased its presence in Afghanistan.
There are about 7 700 British soldiers in Afghanistan, most of whom are in the restive southern region.
Belgium announced on Friday that it would send four F-16 fighter-bombers and around a hundred soldiers from September 1 in Kandahar.
From April, 20 more troops will be sent to help with security at Kabul airport, and another 20 will from October help train and mentor soldiers in the Afghan army, said the statement.
Belgium currently has 418 troops in Afghanistan.
McCormack said the challenges remained high.
"We're in a fight to help the Afghans succeed and to ensure that they are able to build on the progress that they've made over the last six years and not see any backsliding in that success," he said.
He conceded "there is always the risk that the clock could be turned back and you could lose a lot of the gains."
"The greatest threat to Afghanistan's future is abandonment by the international community," Richard Boucher, the State Department's pointman for Afghanistan, told a Senate hearing on Thursday.
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