Brown to host Afghan exit summit

Last update: Mon Nov 16 2009 21:42:22

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Brown to host Afghan exit summit

Mon Nov 16 2009 21:42:22

Brown to host Afghan exit summit Gordon Brown will host international talks to discuss an exit strategy from the conflict in Afghanistan.

The Prime Minister said he had offered to host fellow leaders in the New Year to discuss future strategy.

He said: "I want that conference to chart a comprehensive political framework within which the military strategy can be accomplished.

"It should identify a process for transferring, district by district, to full Afghan control and, if at all possible, set a timetable for transfer starting in 2010.

"For it is only when the Afghans are themselves able to defend the security of their people and deny the territory of Afghanistan as a base for terrorists that our strategy of Afghanisation will have succeeded and our troops can come home."

He used his annual Guildhall foreign policy speech to say the security chiefs believed there was an opportunity to inflict "significant and long-lasting damage to al-Qaeda".