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Richmond upon Thames Liberal Democrats:Covering the constituencies of Twickenham and Richmond Park |
Campbell quizzes Ainsworth on Afghanistan
April 5, 2010 10:01 AM
• [Mar 29] Menzies Campbell (Fife North East, Liberal Democrat): BUT in his carefully crafted answer, the Secretary of State declined to deal with the point that was raised a moment or two ago. Is there a proposal that British forces should be withdrawn from Helmand? Yes or no?
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Bob Ainsworth (Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence; Coventry North East, Labour): Look, let me say to the right hon. and learned Gentleman that, as a result of the huge inflow of forces into the south of Afghanistan, there are a number of proposals as to how we approach the issue of command and control, and how we divide up our forces in order to ensure that all can be successful and that there is no gap in the security that we are providing. Those discussions are ongoing-
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Menzies Campbell (Fife North East, Liberal Democrat): So the answer is yes.
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Bob Ainsworth (Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence; Coventry North East, Labour): There may be people within the coalition, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman has read in The Sunday Telegraph, who believe that it would be a good thing for us to remove ourselves from Helmand to Kandahar. I would have to be persuaded-and I would take some persuading-that that was a good thing. We have developed a level of understanding of the situation in Helmand province over a period of time which should not be thrown away lightly. We have invested a great deal in terms of money and infrastructure, as well as of losses. This is something that we would have to be very concerned about before we would agree to doing it. However, we should not set our face against things as some kind of knee-jerk reaction; we should be prepared to discuss these issues with our coalition partners.
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