UK seeking new world order by Afghan war
Published on 11-20-2009
Source: Press TV
Despite reports of the UK’s plan for peace talks with the
Taliban, Premier Gordon Brown defends Britain’s military involvement in the
Afghan war, saying his country must play a full role in ‘changing the world’.
“I believe that Britain can and must play its full part in
changing the world,” the British prime minister said Monday.
“Britain can lead in the construction of a new world
order,” he said in a speech, extracts of which have been released by Downing
Street.
Supporting the UK’s military mission in the war-torn
country, Brown said more has been planned in 2009 and “enacted with greater
success” to cripple al-Qaeda than in any year since 2001.
“So I vigorously defend our action in Afghanistan and
Pakistan because al-Qaeda is today the biggest source of threat to our national
security,” he noted.
The premier is set to give his annual foreign policy speech
to the London Lord Mayor’s banquet at Guildhall on Monday evening.
The US, with cooperation of its European allies including
Britain, invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to allegedly eradicate the Taliban and
arrest militant leaders.
But more than eight years after the so-called war on
terrorism began, a leaked memo has revealed that the British government has been
seeking reconciliation with Taliban’s leadership council based in the Pakistani
city of Quetta.
Britain’s state television BBC reported on Saturday that
the memo proposed that “reconciled” Taliban should be removed from the UN
sanctions list.
After the beginning of the war, Taliban leader Mullah Omar
and al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden fled to Quetta, where they received the
support of Pakistani security officials.
The eight-year-old war in Afghanistan has so far failed to
kill or arrest the main militant commanders.
Brown, who is tipped to lose a general election to the
opposition Conservatives due by June, is under tense pressure at home as public
support for the war is waning.
According to the latest opinion poll, an increasing
majority of Britons want the country’s 9,000 troops out of Afghanistan within a
year.
Some 71 percent of Britons would back a phased withdrawal
of British forces within 12 months, a poll conducted by the Independent showed
on Sunday.
In the latest casualty on Sunday, a British soldier was
killed while on foot patrol in southern Afghanistan, taking the death toll to
233.