Britain's Straw gets only limited approval for troops in Afghanistan

16/05/2001| IslamWeb

TEHRAN, Iran, (AFP)-British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw won limited approval for the deployment of British troops in Afghanistan in talks here with acting Northern Alliance foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, an Afghan diplomat said."Dr. Abdullah has given our approval for a limited deployment," Mohammad Kheirkhah, the Afghan ambassador in Iran, told AFP, adding: "But in case of an important deployment, there should be more dialogue and discussions."
Kheirkhah indicated that the Northern Alliance had accepted the presence of 100 British special forces who flew into Afghanistan's Bagram air base on November 15.
However Iran's state radio quoted Abdullah as saying that "the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan is dispensible."
"The events of the last few weeks in Afganistan have proven that only the internal forces in Afghanistan can establish peace in this country," Abdullah reportedly added before leaving Tehran.
"Currently, a limited number of foreign troops are present in Afghanistan for humanitarian efforts. But their presence is different to the presence of those who have come for the war," Abdullah said.
For the last week, 6,000 British soldiers have been on 48-hour standby to be sent into Afghanistan, but plans for their deployment appeared to have stalled Wednesday amid reports of opposition to the move from Washington as well as the Northern Alliance.
"How and when and where we deploy (troops) is a matter we can decide day by day and we should retain the flexibility to do so as we wish," British Prime Minister Tony Blair told parliament in London.
Straw also met with Iran's Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi for talks "on regional developments and the crisis in Afghanistan," state television said.
"We spoke on Afghan issues and the future government in this country. We also discussed the situation of two million Afghan refugees in Iran with Dr. Kharazi," Straw was quoted as saying.
No further details on their talks were available.
Straw is making his second trip to Iran since the September 11 attacks on the United States. On September 25 he became the first British foreign secretary to visit Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution here.
"Iran is a key power in this region. It has always been affected some way or the other by the situation in Afghanistan," he told reporters on arrival.
Tehran is fiercely opposed to the presence of foreign powers in the region and says the government of Burhanuddin Rabbani, ousted by the Taliban in 1996 but now back in the saddle as a result of the Northern Alliance successes, is the sole legitimate Afghan administration at present.