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NATO Summit

The hon. Gentleman has the advantage of knowing the facts on Afghanistan, as his contributions to discussions in the House demonstrate. He identified an international aspect of our mission in Afghanistan, and it is entirely appropriate to do so at this stage. The international community, in the form of NATO, faced that challenge squarely, and he will be aware that, drawing on the example of Kosovo, NATO accepted the proposal that a contact group should be part of the structure that he described. At the end of the day, it is fundamentally a NATO mission on behalf of the United Nations, which represents the whole world. Co-ordination must apply to all the strands and all parts of command and control, both in civil and military operations. It has largely improved at the provincial level in many areas, but at the national level the development of governance and international co-operation will deliver the success that we need.