Britain cannot 'lose nerve' in Afghanistan, UK defense secretary
IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency
London, June 14, IRNA -- Afghanistan remains "vital" to the UK's national security and Britain cannot lose its nerve in the nine-year old war, Defence Secretary Liam Fox warned Monday.
"This is no time for us to lose our nerve and we must find the language to persuade the British people to stick with us. We cannot allow Afghanistan to be used again as a haven for terrorism," Fox said.
But in his first speech as defence secretary, he also caution his government will act "ruthlessly and without sentiment" in finding savings in the defence budget, saying the military would have to bear its share in the need to slash public spending to cut the country’s record deficit.
"Resources are tight for the country as a whole and defence is no exception,” Fox told the Royal United Services Institute in London at a conference on the government’s defence review.
"We cannot insure against every imaginable risk and so we need to decide which risks we are willing to meet and which risks we are willing to take," he said, according to extracts of his speech obtained by IRNA.
Last week, Prime Minister David Cameron visited Afghanistan when he ruled out sending more troops and said he hoped for swift progress so that Britain's 9,500-strong deployment could return home.
A total of 295 British personnel have died in Afghanistan since the overthrow of the Taliban regime in 2001 and the UK government is under growing public pressure to withdrawal.
Fox stressed that the situation in Afghanistan would take time to resolve, but said he hoped there would be “significant progress” by the end of the year.
Last month, he provoked controversy by saying he would like British troops to "come back as soon as possible" while referring to Afghanistan to "a broken 13th-century country".
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End News / IRNA / News Code 1177312
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