Downing Street Says » Afghanistan

» Tuesday, July 4, 2006

Afghanistan

Asked whether the announcement that British troops would receive anything they needed had been cleared with the Treasury, the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) said, as the Prime Minister had this morning, that we had not yet received any request for extra resources. It was still being worked through the system. If and when we did we would consider it and supply whatever was necessary. Asked what the Government’s policy was on the poppy harvest, the PMOS said we had well worked out plans for encouraging farmers to eradicate poppies and generate alternate incomes, which they could talk to DfID about, but you had to have a security environment to encourage that. If you did not have that security environment then people would find it more difficult to have viable alternative forms of income. This was why security and the future of the economy went hand in hand.

Put that Tom Watson had said it was important to wean people off the poppy economy but not too fast, the PMOS said that it was all part of having a controlled environment in which it was possible to do these things. Part of that was to have proper security. In that regard he had noticed that people had been quoting one sentence from what John Reid had said at the time of deployment, but people should look back at the entire quote where they would see that clipping the quote out of context in that way was deeply misleading to say the least. He had also said that if it became necessary we would not only defend ourselves but also where appropriate we would go on the offensive. People should quote the entire context not just that one part they liked.

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Afghanistan

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