Downing Street Says » NATO Summit-Afghanistan

Asked why were the party was leaving Riga after so short a time, the PMOS replied that the Prime Minister would tonight be the first of the leaders to talk at the dinner, and he would give a report back on his visit to Afghanistan. The Prime Minister would be giving three basic messages. One was that what Afghanistan needed to know was that NATO was there for the long haul, but it was sustainable in terms of its efforts. We also recognised that it was not just the military intervention, but also a reconstruction side to that, and that we would carry through and people would be flexible in their response to Afghanistan.

The Prime Minister would get the chance to set out his case tonight, and others would talk at the dinner. Tomorrow morning, at the working session, there would be a wider discussion about NATO as a whole, and the Prime Minister would be contributing to that. Therefore, by lunchtime tomorrow, the Prime Minister would have done the job that he had gone to Riga to do and was returning to London to continue on with his domestic business.

Asked if this was the Prime Minister’s first ever trip as a Prime Minister to Latvia, the PMOS said that it was Mr. Blair’s first visit to Latvia.

Asked with regards to flexibility in Afghanistan, and what sort we were looking for, the PMOS replied that the reality was that the task in Afghanistan before last week was multi-faceted. At times, there was a need for troops in different places, and at times, there needed to be more emphasis on reconstruction in different places. There was also a need for more civilian effort, but the PMOS said that people should wait and see how the discussions went tonight. What we were looking for was an ability to suit the response to the need, and that was what we were doing. As we had said last week in Afghanistan, the military was one side of it, and nobody was downplaying the hard military side of it at all. However, the reconstruction was important, as were many of the things that DFID were doing, for example. Therefore, there were different aspects to it, and we had to have that flexible, multi-faceted approach.

The PMOS said that above all, what we were looking for out of Riga was a restatement of our commitment to the mission as a whole, and the fact that we all recognised that this was not a short term fix, but rather, it was a long haul.

Asked for further information about President Bush’s visit to Jordan, and its purpose, and also, could we comment on the reports from DFID that it might take 10 to 15 years to get Afghanistan back on its feet, and did we recognise that length of commitment, the PMOS replied that with regards to Afghanistan, what people had to recognise was that Afghanistan was not a matter of reconstruction, but rather, of construction. In many parts of Afghanistan, there was not a civil administration, therefore, we had to build it from the ground up. Therefore, that was precisely why it was a long haul.

With regards to President Bush’s visit to Jordan, the PMOS said that he did not want to act as a commentator for what President Bush did, but what we did welcome was a renewed emphasis on making progress in the Middle East as a whole. We also welcomed the ceasefire that had been announced this week, and we welcomed anything that made progress in the Middle East possible. As the Prime Minister had repeatedly said, we needed to address the problems in Iraq, and the other problems in the Middle East, but above all, we had to try and prevent the Palestine/Israel issue. The ceasefire and the comments that had been made by both sides this week were very welcome in that regard.

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Post a public comment

Name (required)
E-mail (required)
(You must give an email address, but it will not be displayed to the public.)
Website
(You may give your website, and it will be displayed to the public.)

Comments:

This is not a way of contacting the Prime Minister. If you would like to contact the Prime Minister, go to the 10 Downing Street official site.

Privacy note: Shortly after posting, your name and comment will be displayed on the site. This means that people searching for your name on the Internet will be able to find and read your comment.

Original PMOS briefings are © Crown Copyright. Crown Copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland. Click-use licence number C02W0004089. Material is reproduced from the original 10 Downing Street source, but may not be the most up-to-date version of the briefings, which might be revised at the original source. Users should check with the original source in case of revisions. Comments are © Copyright contributors. Everything else is © Copyright Downing Street Says.

» Tuesday, November 28, 2006

NATO Summit-Afghanistan

No Comments »

Post a public comment

Search

Supported by

Recent Briefings

Archives

Links

Syndicate (RSS/XML)

Credits

Enquiries