British PM: 2010 ‘Vital’ for Afghanistan

Posted on Jun 11, 2010

AP / Stefan Rousseau

British Prime Minister David Cameron, second from left in front, goes for a morning run with British soldiers at Camp Bastion in Helmand province, Afghanistan.

Britain’s prime minister popped over to Afghanistan on Thursday to declare that this year will be vital in the military campaign against the Taliban, but he ruled out any increase in British forces there. —JCL

The New York Times:.

Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain flew to Kabul, Afghanistan, on Thursday, saying this would be the “vital year” for the campaign against the Taliban.

“This is the year when we have to make progress—progress for the sake of the Afghan people, but progress also on behalf of people back at home who want this to work,” Mr. Cameron said.

He said an increase in the number of British troops in Afghanistan, now about 10,000, was “not remotely on the U.K. agenda.” He made clear that Britain’s goal was to hand over security responsibilities to Afghan forces as soon as possible.

At a news conference with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, Mr. Cameron said, “No one wants British troops to stay in Afghanistan for a day longer than is necessary.”

Read more

More Below the Ad

New and Improved Comments

We are launching a major overhaul of our comments section.

In addition to more robust spam filtering and moderation, new features include the ability to rate other comments, sort how they are displayed and respond directly via e-mail or in a thread.

Unfortunately, commenters will lose their existing Truthdig identities. It's a pain, we know, but on the plus side you will now be able to log in with a plethora of options, including Google, Twitter, Facebook and Disqus accounts.

Before launching this system we spent months in discussion with our top commenters. We listened to the feedback and we hope you like what we've come up with.

Please direct any problems or concerns to us via our contact page.