Downing Street Says » Troops in Afghanistan

» Monday, December 15, 2008

Troops in Afghanistan

Put that 300 extra troops had already been sent to Afghanistan and was it true that no more would be sent before the NATO Summit in April, the PMS said that this was the position that we had set out and he would not be putting any additional interpretation on the Prime Minister s words beyond what he actually said. Obviously, we did keep all of these things under review.

Put that General Petraeus and President-elect Obama wanted a lot more troops in Afghanistan, the PMS said that we wanted to see an increase in troops from those countries which were not providing that many. That was why the Prime Minister had been talking about the need for extra burden sharing and we would be consulting and working very closely with our American allies in the period ahead.

We had made our announcement today and that involved a temporary increase of around 300 troops to take us to around 8300 through to August. Asked if the Prime Minister had discussed the issue with other EU leaders such as President Sarkozy or Chancellor Merkel, the PMS said he would not get into discussions about individual countries, but other NATO allies were well aware of what our position was.

Asked to confirm that the 300 troops were already out in Afghanistan, the PMS replied that the MoD would provide the detail of exactly who the troops were in a WMS tomorrow. Some had already gone out and some were due to go out in the next few weeks or so. Asked whether President Karzai had accepted an anti-corruption task force, the PMS said he would have to check on the status of that.

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