Pino ARLACCHI (ALDE, IT), rapporteur, presents his report on a new strategy for Afghanistan, in the European Parliament in Brussels.

Brussels

meeting

EU - Afghanistan (T)

GOMES, Ana (S&D, PT)

TANNOCK, Timothy Charles Ayrton (ECR, UK)

ARLACCHI, Pino (S&D, IT)

A new strategy for Afghanistan: extracts from the report by Pino ARLACCHI (ALDE, IT)

SOUNDBITE (English), Pino ARLACCHI (ALDE, IT), rapporteur, We have amendments 3 70, 3 71 3 72, Kasoulides, Van Orden, Giannakou, paragraph 62. I propose everybody to accept the original text to change from NATO allies to Afghan allies. Because in fact there was an ambiguity in my formulation. I did not specify that I was referring to the Afghan allies and not to the NATO allies. So since the amendments are all oriented into correcting this, if they accept the original text would be maintain the change from NATO allies to afghan allies.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ana GOMES (S&amp;D, PT), I don&rsquo;t think we deserve anything. The people of Afghanistan deserve support. And I think it is quite inappropriate to talk about our leading role because we haven&rsquo;t had any leading role. We have been dispersing money and following the Americans not very critically and possibly this is one of the reasons why we are where we are with a bunch of strategies in different points of the process.

SOUNDBITE (English), Charles TANNOCK (ECR, UK), In spite of all the negativism we have to remember that you know if the NATO forces, if the western Alliance is defeated in Afghanistan then we withdraw as it were. Then there is a real danger of the Taliban taking over destabilizing Pakistan and then resulting in a terrible nuclear confrontation between a talibanized Pakistan and India. So for strategic reasons we have to carry on fighting and carry on investing and nation building even if there is no obvious exit strategy at the end of the road. But overall we support the main thrust of the report.

SOUNDBITE (English), Pino ARLACCHI (ALDE, IT), rapporteur, I said already that when I went to Afghanistan last February I was struck because all my criticism was shared by ISAF and the Mc Crystal people. They say you are right on your criticism: we lost the support of the population, because we killed too many civilians. You are right in saying that the strategy was wrong what we are trying to do is change the course and to have a new strategy. And our objective they said to me is not to reduce the civilian casualties; it is to go the zero casualties.

SOUNDBITE (English), Pino ARLACCHI (ALDE, IT), rapporteur, We need Pakistan on board. Pakistan has the right to say what they think about Afghanistan don&rsquo;t forget that Pakistan has almost 3000 kilometers of borders with Afghanistan. And also Iran has very big border with Afghanistan. So these countries have the right to say, are the first countries that are interested outside Afghanistan.