By IRNA,
London : One of Britain’s longest serving MPs has welcomed Defence Secretary Liam Fox setting 2014 for the withdrawal of UK troops from Afghanistan but questions why the date has not been set much earlier.
“It’s good news. We have an exit date – of sorts,” said Labour MP Paul Flynn, who has been urging the British government to set out a withdrawal timetable for years.
“Minds have been now changed. There will be no turning back from the exit strategy. But why 2014? Why not 2011 like the Canadians?” Flynn said in an interview with IRNA. “The longer the exit is delayed the more soldiers will die in a lost cause. Four deaths in the past twenty four hours is a price that is not worth paying,” he warned.
The 75-year old MP raised an Early Day Motion in parliament last month describing the British government’s Afghanistan strategy as “self-serving and unachievable” and calling for a halt to the “impossible” war mission.
Speaking ahead of the Kabul conference, Defence Secretary Liam Fox on Sunday restated a target for the handover of security control to Afghan forces by 2014 so Britain’s 10,000 troops can withdraw from Afghanistan by 2014.
Flynn, who has been MP for Newport West, in Wales, since 1987, said he “might be accused of cynicism if I suggest the appointed date has been selected for political advantage just in time for the 2015 General Election.”
“The excuse is that Afghanistan is not yet ready. No serious progress will be made in the next four years. We have failed to end the corruption, drug trafficking and abuse by Army and Police in the past nine years,” he said.
“Pouring in hundreds of millions of pounds in aid has left Afghanistan in the same wretched state as it was in 2001. It’s all a game of pretence and deceit,” he told IRNA.
The MP, who is also a member of the Public Administration Committee and opposed the war in Iraq, said that he expected that a “relative stability” will be declared in 2014 but warned that “by then hundreds more British troops may have lost their lives.”
“We will then get out and politicians will expect a bonus of grateful votes in the General Election. We are repeating the final days of First World War and the Vietnam War. Lives were sacrificed for the advantage of political leaders,” he said.
“Public opinion now will not tolerate more futile deaths of our brave soldiers. The call should be troops home by Christmas,” he said.
Flynn has long argued that the the Nato-led war in Afghanistan is based upon false premises, saying the British government’s claim that the country presents a terrorist threat to Britain was a “foolish assumption.”
“Sooner or later an orderly deal will have to be made with the Taliban. It was the only sensible outcome,” he told IRNA in an interview in January.
Among other issues, Flynn has campaigned for Britain’s nuclear weapons to be included in disarmament negotiations to help achieve a successful Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Conference in May 2010.