London, Nov 11, IRNA ,The security of Afghanistan remains a “vital national interest” and Britain must see the war there through to a successful conclusion, Defence Secretary John Hutton said Tuesday.
Speaking on the day when the dead of the First and Second World Wars are commemorated in Remembrance Day events across the UK, Hutton compared the 9/11 terror attacks which triggered the Afghan war to the invasion of Belgium in 1914 and Poland in 1939.
Just as in the two World Wars, events far away from Britain’s shores have a direct impact on the security of its people, he argued.
The defence secretary, who was due later Tuesday to make his first major speech since taking up his office last month, paid tribute to the servicemen and women deployed both there and in Iraq, and pledged that they would be “as well protected as they can be”.
“We want to make sure that if we are going to fight this very difficult conflict – and we have no choice but to do that – then we have got to make sure that our men and women are as well protected as they can be,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“I can’t guarantee that no-one is going to get injured or wounded. The equipment that we deploy in Afghanistan and Iraq is the equipment we have been advised to deploy by our military chiefs,” Hutton said.
He insisted that seven years after the invasion of Afghanistan which toppled the Taliban regime, it was important not to lose sight of the reasons why British troops are deployed in the central Asian country.
The Afghan war, he said, is an “incredibly difficult” conflict, where frontlines were not clear and where victory must be achieved not only on the battlefield, but also in political and economic terms.