Afghanistan mission accomplished says David Cameron

UK troops can come home from Afghanistan
knowing it was mission accomplished, David
Cameron has said as he visited the country.
The prime minister met forces stationed at
Camp Bastion in Helmand, a year before the last
British combat forces are due to leave the
country.
Mr Cameron, who ate breakfast with troops,
said a "basic level of security" had been
achieved.
They could "come home with their heads held
high", he added.
Senior military figures are braced for increased
activity as more troops pull out and expect
elections being staged next year to be a
particular focus for insurgent groups.
Asked by reporters if personnel were coming
home with the message "mission accomplished",
the prime minister, accompanied by former
England footballer Michael Owen, said: "Yes, I
think they do."
He added: "To me, the absolute driving part of
the mission is a basic level of security so it
doesn't become a haven for terror. That is the
mission, that was the mission and I think we
will have accomplished that mission and so our
troops can be very proud of what they have
done."
Mr Cameron's comments come two months
after Afghan president Hamid Karzai said there
was only "partial" security in the country and
foreign troops should have done more to target
safe havens in Pakistan.
They also echo former US President George W.
Bush's May 2003 declaration that the US role in
Iraq was "mission accomplished", only to see a
big increase in sectarian violence which lasted a
decade.
Al-Qaeda threat
Asked whether Mr Cameron's own comments
risked seeming premature, a No 10 spokesman
said he had not used the words "mission
accomplished" himself but had responded to a
question from a journalist accompanying him.
He had said the situation in Afghanistan was not
perfect, but the threats from terrorists had
decreased and "that's because of the
achievements of our armed forces".
As to whether the mission had been
accomplished, BBC security correspondent Frank
Gardner said the presence of UK and other
foreign troops in Afghanistan since 2001 had
stopped al-Qaeda cells from operating in the
country.
However he said there were already signs that
as US forces withdraw from some of the more
remote provinces in the north-east, al-Qaeda
were filtering back in, so in terms of
international terror (as opposed to insurgency
within the country which remains high), his
verdict was "12 years successful, future
uncertain".
Mr Cameron's brief visit was what has become a
traditional pre-Christmas prime ministerial trip.
He took a helicopter to a forward operating
base, Sterga 2, in the Nahr-e Saraj part of
Helmand, where he had lunch with a small
group of soldiers.
Around 5,200 British troops are now based in
Afghanistan, down from 9,000 at the start of
the year. There have been 446 British deaths
since operations began in 2001.
Speaking afterwards to journalists Mr Cameron
said: "The timetable for the withdrawal of
British troops is a plan that we will stick to. I
said, back in 2010, that after the end of 2014
there would not be British troops in a combat
role and we will stick to that.

Russia missile

European countries bordering Russia's
territory of Kaliningrad say they are worried
at reports that Moscow has put nuclear-
capable missiles there.
Lithuania and Poland both issued statements of
concern.
Russia has not confirmed the report but insists
it has every right to station missiles in its
western-most region.
Moscow has long threatened to move Iskander
short-range missile systems to Kaliningrad in
response to the United States' own European
missile shield.
Russia sees the missile shield as a threat to its
nuclear deterrent.
It was one of the biggest sources of
confrontation between Moscow and Washington
during the presidencies of George W Bush and
Vladimir Putin.
President Barack Obama tried to "reset"
relations with Russia, and the shield system was
revised - but it survived in a different form and
continued to antagonise Russia.
'No violation'
The US insists that the missile shield is not
aimed at Russia but designed to defend Europe
from attack from "rogue states" - assumed to
include Iran.
A Russian defence ministry spokesman, Igor
Konashenkov, did not confirm the report - in the
German newspaper Bild - that the Iskander
system had been deployed to Kaliningrad.
But he did say: "Iskander operational-tactical
missile systems have indeed been commissioned
by the Western Military District's missile and
artillery forces," adding that Russia's
deployment "does not violate any international
treaties or agreements".
The Western Military District includes parts of
western and north-western Russia, including the
Kaliningrad exclave, which is separated from
Russia proper and wedged between Poland,
Lithuania, and the Baltic Sea.
The Russian newspaper Izvestia reported on
Monday that the missiles had already been
stationed in the area for more than a year.
Lithuania's Defence Minister Juozas Olekas said:
"I am worried about signals that Russia is about
to modernise missile systems it has deployed in
Kaliningrad.
"Further militarisation of this region, bordering
the Baltic states and Nato, creates further
anxiety, and we will be watching the situation
there closely.''
The Polish foreign ministry said: "Plans to deploy
new Iskander-M rockets in [Kaliningrad] are
worrying."
It added that such a deployment "would
contradict effective Polish-Russian co-operation,
in particular with respect to this region, and
undermine constructive dialogue between Nato
and Russia. We will raise this topic in our
bilateral contacts with the Russian side."

Edward snowden leaks

The US National Security Agency is
considering offering an amnesty to fugitive
intelligence contractor Edward Snowden if he
agrees to stop leaking secret documents, an
NSA official says.
The man in charge of assessing the leaks'
damage, Richard Ledgett, said he could be open
to an amnesty deal.
Disclosures by the former intelligence worker
have revealed the extent of the NSA's spying
activity.
But NSA Director Gen Keith Alexander has
dismissed the idea.
Mr Ledgett spoke to US television channel CBS
about the possibility of an amnesty deal: "So my
personal view is, yes it's worth having a
conversation about.
"I would need assurances that the remainder of
the data could be secured, and my bar for
those assurances would be very high, would be
more than just an assertion on his part."
But Gen Alexander, who is retiring early next
year, rejected the idea of any amnesty for Mr
Snowden.
"This is analogous to a hostage taker taking 50
people hostage, shooting 10, and then say, 'if
you give me full amnesty, I'll let the other 40
go'. What do you do?"
In an earlier interview with the Reuters news
agency, Mr Ledgett said he was deeply worried
about highly classified documents not yet public
that are among the 1.7 million files Mr Snowden
is believed to have accessed.
Mr Snowden's disclosures have been
"cataclysmic" for the agency, Mr Ledgett told
Reuters.
Earlier this month, a UK newspaper editor told
UK MPs only 1% of files leaked by Mr
Snowden had been published by the
newspaper .
The state department says its position has not
changed and that Mr Snowden must return to
the US to face charges, says the BBC's Suzanne
Kianpour.
The US has charged Mr Snowden with theft of
government property, unauthorised
communication of national defence information
and wilful communication of classified
communications intelligence.
Each of the charges carries a maximum 10-year
prison sentence.
At the weekend, the NSA allowed a CBS
television crew into their headquarters for the
first time in its history, in an effort to be more
open about what the agency does with the data
it collects.