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NATO Summit

On the last point, the hon. Gentleman will be aware from the declaration that Riga has successfully delivered the first step towards deepening NATO partnership relations with existing partners, with troop contributors—of whom there are 18 over and above the 26 NATO nations, in operations across the globe—and potential contributors to NATO-led operations. The part of the declaration that deals with that covers a number of pages and he will have to take the time to read it himself. In response to his question, that means that non-NATO countries, such as Australia and Japan, will be able to discuss existing and future operations with NATO in a flexible, transparent and pragmatic way, and will have access to the partnership tools, which are important, currently available only to existing partners. Those are significant steps forward and they were unanimously agreed. I understand the concentration on Afghanistan. That was the priority in terms of operations for the summit itself. There is an understanding by all those involved in Afghanistan that this is a long-term commitment. However, I hasten to add that that does not mean a long-term commitment in its current phase. As we have seen, there are parts of Afghanistan where our commitment to the country has moved it on significantly. Holding that improvement is, of course, important. Stabilising it, and building governance and economic development in those areas is important to continued security. I am careful to qualify the commitment to the long haul, because it is often erroneously interpreted as a suggestion that there will be a long haul of, for example, the sort of war fighting that we have seen in Afghanistan in the immediate past, but that is not what I mean. There is a commitment by the developed world, beyond NATO, to a long haul in Afghanistan, because there is no alternative. I am not in a position to answer the hon. Gentleman’s specific questions about when things will happen. One of the delights of NATO is that the countries are all different, and they have different ways of making decisions. Some of them constitutionally require the involvement of their legislature in making decisions and announcements, so we must just wait and see what happens. However, there has been an important step forward in accepting the principle that the troops deployed to such a theatre ought, in principle, to accept the same risks. That issue has to work its way through, and I accept that there are still challenges. We should not belittle the contributions of some of the smaller countries. Some of them make contributions that are significantly disproportionate to their size. Importantly—and I make this point advisedly—the effect that they have with comparatively small numbers of specialised troops is often disproportionate.