By IRNA,
London : British Foreign Secretary David Miliband has denied that the war in Afghanistan risks becoming another Vietnam quagmire.
“I take the warning seriously. But I don’t accept the thesis” that west troops are bogged down in an unwinnable war and waning popularity at home, Miliband said.
The US has remained haunted for more than 35 years since its troops were forced into a chaotic evacuation from Vietnam in 1975 with more than 1,000 Americans still missing.
“The conflict in Vietnam was the product of a world divided by the cold war. The UK and its European partners did not join the US in Vietnam, unconvinced by the arguments for intervention,” the foreign secretary said.
He argued that the war in Afghanistan has “commanded widespread global support” and that the rationale for continuing “remains a direct concern about the threat to our national security if Afghanistan once again becomes safe ground for al-Qaeda under the umbrella of the Taliban.”
Miliband was defending the British government’s policy in an article for the New Statesman magazine ahead of hosting a London conference on Afghanistan next week with more than 70 countries and international organisations invited to attend.
Despite British and other Nato troops suffering record casualties in Afghanistan in the past year, he argued that the “danger is being outgoverned, rather than outgunned.”
“The international community must renew and redouble its commitment to success,” the foreign secretary said, accepting that the current year would be “critical” for the war effort.
Peace campaigning lead by Stop the War Coalition are planning to blockade the London conference on January 28, sating it was attempting to rebrand Afghanistan as “the good war.”
The latest opinion poll in the Independent on Sunday last November found that 71% of Britons want the troops out of Afghanistan and that 47% believed the threat of terrorism on UK soil is increased by British forces remaining there.