Rice gives US backing to Afghanistan
Rice gives US backing to Afghanistan
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Wednesday, 28, Jun 2006 01:57
Embattled Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai will continue to have the full support of the United States in quelling the resurgent Taliban uprisings, Condoleezza Rice has vowed.
The US secretary of state met with President Karzai and senior military officials during a brief visit to the country's capital Kabul this morning in between meeting Pakistan's president General Pervez Musharraf yesterday and flying to Moscow today for a G8 ministerial meeting.
Speaking after the meeting at the presidential palace, Dr Rice admitted the Taliban's bloody five-year battle is possibly now in its most fervent period but that the rebel militants would not be allowed to succeed in displacing the US-backed Afghanistan government.
"Afghanistan has determined enemies, they are ruthless but they will not succeed," she stated. "They are simply not going to win. We will not allow it to happen. We are not going to tire, we are not going to leave."
Dr Rice last visited Afghanistan in March this year when she accompanied US president George Bush on a trip there.
She said today that some progress has been made in the war on terror since then but that there remains a long way to go, most notably so in terms of increased international cooperation.
"This is a thinking enemy that is changing its tactics too," she added. "We are making great progress. But we can all do more.
"We can all work harder we all need to constantly assess our strategy, look at our tactics and make certain that we are responding to their change in tactics, because this is a thinking enemy."
President Karzai last week publicly criticised the US-led coalition's anti-terror campaign but he showed no sign of ill-feeling today.
He did say, however, that "when we speak of success, it doesn't mean that we forget the problems".