Afghanistan to take control in five years
Hamid Karzai, Gordon Brown and David Miliband at today's conference
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By Matt Hallam. |  |
Thursday, 28, Jan 2010 07:36
By Matthew Champion and Elizabeth Davies.
Afghanistan will be responsible for its own security in five years, and will begin assuming control in 2010, a key conference on the future of the country has concluded.
But the Afghanistan London Conference was unable to agree upon specifics of the security handover, with decisions put off until an accompanying meeting in Kabul later this year.
UK foreign secretary David Miliband said $140 million had been pledged towards president Hamid Karzai's reconciliation strategy, which will see non-ideological Taliban members tempted back to mainstream society if they embrace Afghanistan's constitution.
"The Afghan people want and deserve a better society and future," Mr Miliband told journalists at the end-of-conference press conference after its final communiqué was published.
Click here to read the communiqué in full.
He said the coming year would be "decisive" for Afghanistan and its international partners owing to the presence of a new administration and military and civilian surge.
"Sixty-five to 75 foreign ministers will go away very clear about the challenges but also how they will be met," he continued, explaining that a new coherent strategy on security, governance/development and regional relations had been agreed upon.
Mr Miliband's Afghan counterpart Rangin Spanta said he dreamt of a more peaceful and stable Afghanistan.
"To realise this dream we are willing to take more responsibility for the future of Afghanistan and the Afghan people," he explained.
Following concerns that bringing the Taliban back into the fold of government would threaten the rights of Afghan women, and the human rights of all Afghans, Dr Spanta said "absolute gender equality" was a "red line" in President Karzai's reconciliation programme, drawing nods of approval from the unofficial delegation of Afghan women in the conference hall.
But he added: "We need more time and patience to realise this."
Mr Miliband was more forthright in his message to members of the Taliban whose primary motivation for joining the insurgency was an economic one.
"Either you recognise the constitution or you face unremitting military force," the foreign secretary said.
"Reintegration and reconciliation not about selling out the Afghan constitution, it's about reinforcing the constitution."
The conclusions of the conference seem at odds with opening remarks from President Karzai, who said it would take to or three years for Afghans to begin taking control of security and that foreign troops could be needed up until 2025.
But Lord West, Home Office minister and former First Sea Lord, told inthenews.co.uk that he could not envisage such a scenario.
"Timelines are very dangerous but my personal view is that something would have to go catastrophically wrong for us to still be fighting the way we are in 15 years," Lord West said.
"There are British troops in 100 countris around the world giving advice, there might well be some soldiers there, but not like this," he added. "I just cannot see it."
Earlier, Gordon Brown had impressed the importance of the "Afghanisation" of the south Asian country.
He announced that the Afghan army would be expanded to 134,000 by October of this year, followed by an additional boost to 171,600 by October 2011. With an accompanying increase in the size of the police, Afghan national security forces should number 300,000 by the end of 2011.
President Barack Obama declared in December that although he was sending 30,000 more American troops to Afghanistan, forces would begin to come home in July 2011. Mr Brown was unwilling to lay out a similar timetable, but did state that the conference today marked the beginning of a "transition process".
However, both President Karzai and Mr Brown stressed the importance of a political strategy in battling insecurity within the country. Mr Brown commended the US secretary of state Hillary Clinton's commitment to a "civilian surge" and urged other international partners to send more civilians to aid the country's reconstruction.
More than 70 delegations from Albania to Uzbekistan attended the talks at Lancaster House in central London today.