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EU Council/Afghanistan, India and Pakistan

I should point out to my hon. Friend that our strategy is based on complementing the military intervention that is necessary to keep peace in Afghanistan and maintain democracy with other measures that will build up the confidence of the Afghan people so that they are enabled to govern themselves. That includes, as I have just said, training the Afghan forces and police, as well as building up local government, working with the tribes to create a means by which localities are properly governed and cleaning out corruption from the centre—on which I have pressed President Karzai, and why our multi-agency task force is going in. It also includes giving Afghan people a stake in their future—by helping them to become wheat farmers, for example, rather than farmers of drugs and narcotics—whether they are in villages, towns or in the countryside. That is our strategy for Afghanistan. It is necessary that we have the number of troops to deal with the Taliban, but it is also necessary that we train the Afghan army and police and that we invest in building the facilities that are necessary so that people have a stake in Afghanistan's future.