US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday played down fears that Afghanistan could become a lost cause but admitted Washington faced a "bumpy" ride to press allies into sharing the burden there.
She made the comments shortly before arriving in London for high-level talks with her close British allies about their common drive to draft more NATO forces into crushing a resurgent Taliban in southern Afghanistan.
Alluding to ruffled feathers within the alliance, Rice said she hoped the need to "tell the truth" about mission needs would not be taken as a "desire to denigrate" contributions allies have made.
She did not name the allies, but Germany last week rejected US appeals for sending combat troops to the south and barely disguised its irritation with the reportedly "stern" way they were made.
"We have made no secret about it that there are certain allies that are in much more dangerous parts of the country," Rice told reporters aboard the plane from Washington to London. "And we believe very strongly there ought to be a sharing of that burden throughout the alliance."
Her talks in London with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Foreign Secretary David Miliband precede meetings with NATO defense and foreign ministers over the next few weeks that will culminate in an allied summit in Bucharest in April.
US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates will discuss the situation with his counterparts in Vilnius at the end of the week, she said.
The Guardian newspaper reported yesterday that Britain was to send a fresh force with extra firepower to Afghanistan but this would not increase its overall deployment of around 7,700. British Defence Secretary Des Browne was to make a statement to the House of Commons yesterday.
Rice also played down fears that NATO may not defeat the Taliban. On Tuesday, the International Institute for Strategic Studies warned that Afghanistan risked becoming a "failed state," while yesterday the Senlis Council think tank warned the country was on "a precipice."
"The international community has invested significant time and money in President [Hamid] Karzai and his government," it said. "Unfortunately, these efforts may prove fruitless if they do not move quickly to stabilize the south and Karzai's political support base."
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS