AFGHANISTAN: British Prime Minister Tony Blair says U.K. will stay committed to fighting the Taliban on Afghan soil for "as long as it takes"

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Monday (November 20) that the U.K. will stay committed to fighting the Taliban on Afghan soil for "as long as it takes". The commitment came after Blair held talks with President Hamid Karzai during a visit to the Afghan capital, Kabul. "We came to Afghanistan because it was obvious that the problem in Afghanistan had become a problem for the world. We have got to stay committed for as long as it takes for our own security, not just for the sake of the Afghan people," Blair told reporters at a joint news conference with Karzai. Afghanistan's western allies say the Taliban is on the run, despite a resurgence, but Blair's long-planned visit has been kept in strict hour-by-hour secrecy due to security fears. Fighting in Afghanistan this year is the bloodiest since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban's hardline government exactly five years ago. The British troops in Helmand and other NATO troops in the south have been at the forefront of the combat. And with the rise in fighting and a redeployment to the Taliban's southern heartland, British casualties in Afghanistan are now higher than those in Iraq, with 36 killed since June. British military chiefs say their troops face the bloodiest fighting since the Korean War and are six times more likely to die in Afghanistan than in Iraq. "Yes the Taliban have got time, but the Afghan people have also got time. They're not going anywhere, they're not going to be intimidated out of a better future provided they have the support and the vision that is there, that the president has outlined and that we will support. So their game of waiting is a game that will not succeed," Blair said. Karzai said the international forces in Afghanistan were crucial to ridding the conflict-torn nation of evil. "The international community will surely stay with us until we are firmly on our own feet. And when Afghanistan is firmly on its own feet no evil force can return to Afghanistan. Not then, not now. Bombs and terrorism, that's a different question that no-one can stop, as much as people hate it," Karzai said. Blair flew in from Islamabad, where he had met President Pervez Musharraf to discuss how to beat the Taliban, pool intelligence and quell militancy in Pakistani religious schools. The Taliban's resurgence also comes amid mounting debate over Western policy in Iraq and NATO warnings that it cannot defeat the insurgents on the battlefield. On Friday (November 17), Blair agreed with an Al Jazeera television interviewer's contention that the Western intervention in Iraq had been a disaster -- although he went on to point the finger at outside forces fomenting sectarian violence, and his office later said he had not meant to endorse the questioner's view. Senior Afghan officials also privately criticise Britain, the United States and other allies for not putting more pressure on Pakistan to stop the Taliban and other militants sheltering and training in its lawless borderlands. Pakistan says it is doing everything it can to stop the militants, as it does in the face of similar Indian criticism over Kashmiri separatists operating from Pakistani territory. But senior Afghan intelligence officials say they have given Washington and London clear evidence of continued Pakistani government support of the Taliban, but have been ignored.

ITN Source | November 20, 2006

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