Canada doesn't see safer Afghanistan in next year
Source: Reuters
By Randall Palmer OTTAWA, Dec 21 (Reuters) - Afghanistan is unlikely to get safer in 2007, but if the world abandons the fight against the Taliban it will only find itself sucked back in to combat terrorism later, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in an interview released on Thursday. Parliament backed a motion from Harper in May to keep Canadian troops in the country at least until February 2009 but he is under pressure now from the opposition either to pull out or to put less emphasis on war and more on aid. Harper told Global television his goal was to make progress over the next couple years in securing southern Afghanistan, the dangerous part of the country where 2,500 Canadian troops are fighting a Taliban insurgency. "Obviously we'd like the security situation to improve," he said, adding he expected progress. "Frankly, I don't think it will improve in the next 12 months." But he said the alternative of an early withdrawal -- demanded by the New Democratic Party, the smallest of three opposition parties in Parliament -- is unthinkable. "If we pull out today, if Canada, and those that are carrying the freight -- and there's seven or eight countries in the south that are doing most of the heavy lifting -- if we all leave, my prediction is we'll be back there in less than a decade," he said. "The Taliban represents not just a tyrannical force in Afghanistan but one that has made it clear it intends to spread violence and hatred throughout the world and has shown a capacity to do so in the past. I think if we leave, it will only come back to haunt us." Canada's other two opposition parties, the Liberals and the Bloc Quebecois, are asking Harper to change the Afghan mission to one involving more reconstruction."Do you think if the government could put more of our emphasis on reconstruction and aid that that's not what we would be doing?" Harper asked. "The emphasis is on the military side because these people are in danger, because the strongest resistance in all of Afghanistan... What am I going to tell them (the soldiers)? Don't shoot? Go out and drop your weapons and start going out and delivering aid? I mean, it's crazy." In a separate interview, with Omni television, Harper said it was not possible for Canada to have been neutral in the struggle in July and August between Israel and Lebanon's Shi'ite militant group Hezbollah. "I do not believe Canada can be neutral in a conflict between a democratic state and a terrorist organization bent on its destruction. I don't make any secret of that," he said. "We cannot be neutral toward terrorist groups. These groups threaten us in Afghanistan. They threaten us here and in other parts of the world." Harper had been sympathetic to Israel's invasion of Lebanon in response to shelling of Israeli towns and kidnapping of Israeli soldiers.
| AlertNet news is provided by |  |
