Prime Minister to set new targets for Afghanistan

Gordon Brown upped the political pressure on President Hamid Karzai yesterday, after announcing targets the international community expects the Afghan leader to meet on tacking corruption and improving the country’s security forces. Mr Brown said Mr Karzai would be expected to give commitments at a conference in London on January 28, attended by foreign ministers from a number of countries who will set a timetable for training and deployment of thousands more soldiers and police.

“President Karzai has got to accept that there will be milestones by which he’s going to be judged,” the Prime Minister said.

The United Nations and other international organisations are expected to attend. Mr Brown’s remarks came just days before US President Barack Obama sets out his expansion of the war effort next week.

The international conference in London, to be followed by a meeting in Kabul, will address progressively handing security over to Afghan control, Mr Brown and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said at a Commonwealth summit in Trinidad and Tobago.

Mr Brown said the first benchmark will come three months after the conference: the Afghan Government will be expected to identify additional troops to send to Helmand province for training.

Within six months, the Government should have a clear plan for training more police and reducing corruption among officers, Mr Brown said, and within nine months, Mr Karzai’s administration should have appointed nearly 400 provincial and district governors.

By the end of 2010, Brown said, the government should have trained an additional 50,000 troops and must take control of at least five districts from the 43-nation NATO-led force.

The Prime Minister also said he would announce this week whether conditions have been met to send an additional 500 British troops, bringing the total to 9500.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a statement yesterday calling the planned conference in London “a very timely initiative.”

Together with the later meeting in Afghanistan, it “would outline the framework for an increased lead role for the Afghans in the shaping of their destiny,” he said, and called them “defining moments in the reconfiguration of the relationship between Afghanistan and the international community.”

Mr Obama will address Americans in a prime-time televised speech on Tuesday to explain why US soldiers need to be in Afghanistan and to map the way towards an “endgame” in the conflict.

He is expected to announce he is sending about 30,000 more US troops as part of the strategy to accelerate training of Afghan security forces and press Mr Karzai to improve governance after his re-election in a fraud-tainted vote in August.

Mr Obama’s decision, after a three-month review, is critical for the future of the war in Afghanistan, where 68,000 US troops now anchor a multinational force of 110,000 soldiers.

The war will also be a key issue in a British election due by June 2010, and in US congressional elections in November 2010.