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Afghanistan situation remains extremely challenging, says Hague

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

London, Oct 27, IRNA -- Foreign Secretary William Hague insisted Wednesday that Nato-led troops were making steady progress in Afghanistan after nine years of war, but warned that the situation remained “extremely challenging.”

“One of the effects of increased military activity is that the number of security incidents, particularly those involving direct fire, has increased sharply. So we should not underestimate the highly difficult task our forces continue to face,” Hague said.

While the UK government is confident the right military strategy and the right number of troops in place in Afghanistan, “we must expect levels of violence to remain high, and even increase, as Afghan and ISAF forces tackle the insurgency,” he warned.

Hague’s statement, the first in a new series of quarterly reports, came as the former president of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, warned Nato that victory in Afghanistan is impossible.

Gorbachev, who pulled Soviet troops out of Afghanistan more than 20 years ago after a 10-year war, said that the US and its allies had no alternative but to withdraw its forces if it wanted to avoid another Vietnam.

'Victory is impossible in Afghanistan. (US president) Obama is right to pull the troops out. No matter how difficult it will be,' he said in an interview with the BBC.

The former president criticised the US for reneging on an agreement reached with Iran, India and Pakistan before the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan.

'We had hoped America would abide by the agreement that we reached that Afghanistan should be a neutral, democratic country, that would have good relations with its neighbours and with both the US and the USSR,” he said..

'The Americans always said they supported this, but at the same time they were training militants - the same ones who today are terrorising Afghanistan and more and more of Pakistan,' Gorbachev said.

Because of this, he said it would be more difficult for the US to get out of the situation, while warning that the alternative would be “another Vietnam.” Sending in half-a-million troops also “wouldn't work,' he said.