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Afghanistan: UK Forces

My Lords, certain nations still exercise caveats as the noble Lord described. We are pressing our NATO partners to have close alignment of rules of engagement for NATO commanders for the obvious reasons that we have discussed in this House. The noble Lord reiterated the recognition of the Canadians’ performance. He is right: the Canadians have done, and are doing, an absolutely outstanding job, but so have a number of other countries. I shall not get into the business of specifying partners within the NATO alliance. We need to build on the successes that we have had, persuade those who are not contributing as much as they should and together support the alliance to rebuild Afghanistan.