Brown offers to host talks on Afghanistan withdrawal

By Joe Churcher

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

INTERNATIONAL talks in London could be used to set a "clear timetable" for the handover of power in Afghanistan, the key to bringing troops home, Gordon Brown suggested last night.

The prime minister outlined plans for a summit in the capital in January, as he delivered the latest in a series of vigorous defences of Britain’s military involvement in the country.

He used his annual Guildhall foreign policy speech to say the security chiefs believed there was an opportunity to inflict "significant and long-lasting damage to al-Qaida".

Unprecedented success had already been scored against the terror group this year, he said, "and we must not allow this process to be reversed by retreat or irresolution".

The speech, at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, was the latest stage in a drive to shore up public support for the war amid opinion polls showing strong support for troops to be withdrawn.

It came, as it was announced another British soldier had died in an explosion in Afghanistan, the 97th British death there this year.

Welcoming a commitment by re-elected Afghan president Hamid Karzai to tackle corruption, Mr Brown said he had offered to host fellow leaders in the New Year to discuss future strategy.

"I want that conference to chart a comprehensive political framework within which the military strategy can be accomplished," he said. "It should identify a process for transferring, district by district, to full Afghan control and, if at all possible, set a timetable for transfer starting in 2010. For it is only when the Afghans are themselves able to defend the security of their people and deny the territory of Afghanistan as a base for terrorists that our strategy in Afghanisation will have succeeded and our troops can come home.

"Since January 2008 seven of the top dozen figures in al-Qaida have been killed, depleting its reserve of experienced leaders and sapping its morale. And our security services report to me that there is now an opportunity to inflict significant and long-lasting damage to al-Qaida."

The prime minister also conceded that a climate change treaty is now unlikely to be agreed at a crunch summit in Copenhagen in December, but said it should still aim for a detailed agreement.

Mr Brown, who has tried to persuade other leaders to join him at the UN-sponsored talks in a bid to force progress, said: "Britain is prepared to lead the way proposing a financial plan to ensure all countries can cut carbon emissions. And this should form part of a comprehensive agreement based on politically-binding commitments of all countries, which can be implemented immediately and which can act as the basis for an internationally legally binding treaty as soon as possible."

Mr Brown also launched a staunch defence of European cooperation and attacked "short-sighted" critics who suggested it undermined national interests. Any retreat to unilateralism, he warned in an apparent swipe at the Conservatives, would "condemn our nation to marginalisation, irrelevance and failure".

He also issued a fresh warning to Iran that it faced action if it failed to engage with the latest offers from major nations for a deal over its nuclear programme.

This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Tuesday, November 17, 2009