---

Afghanistan Conference and Yemen Meeting

My Lords, the Statement by the Foreign Secretary seemed to be a mixture of depressingly real facts and, equally depressingly, wholly unrealistic aspirations. I shall raise one aspect, of which the Minister ought to have some professional knowledge. During Operation Panther’s Claw in July, parliamentary colleagues and I had the opportunity to visit Afghanistan. The Minister will remember that her right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary told the House of Commons, in the final debate before the House rose for the summer, that some 90,000 Afghan troops were already trained. However, he revealed that only 450 of them had been persuaded to join Panther’s Claw. Some 15,000 coalition troops were engaged in that ultimately unsuccessful operation. Why, therefore, do the Government have any confidence that, merely by training more relatively low-grade—as has been suggested—Afghan troops, they will be able to persuade them to confront the Taliban at a time when, to them, at least, the Taliban will appear to be winning? Did the noble Baroness not feel some shame when she signed a Written Answer to me and, subsequently, a similar Written Answer to my noble friend Lord Lawson of Blaby, saying that the Government were unable to state the total cost of our military operations in Afghanistan because the MoD did not keep its books in that way? Will she take steps to ensure that the MoD sorts itself out, and will she provide that information, which must be crucial when judging what we can and cannot do?