BRUSSELS, March 19: Britian’s foreign secretary urged European countries on Thursday to boost efforts to improve Afghanistan’s police force and to pay more attention to Pakistan in talks about Afghanistan’s future.

David Miliband and foreign ministers from the other 26 EU member states will focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan in talks on Thursday night at an EU summit in Brussels.

Miliband met with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Washington on Wednesday to discuss an upcoming US review of its Afghanistan policy.

“We all understand that without secure and effective police forces to back up military efforts there’s not going to be stability in Afghanistan,” Miliband told reporters in Brussels.

“I think we’ve got some interesting ideas being put forward by the French and others about how the policing mission can be reinforced and dovetail with the Nato efforts,” he said.

The review of Afghanistan policy that President Barack Obama is expected to act on and announce next week includes recommendations that the US combine a boost in military deployments with a steep increase in civilian experts, from agronomists to legal experts, senior US officials say.

Miliband said the report also would stress that Afghanistan and Pakistan must be viewed together.
“It’s important ... that Pakistan isn’t just a footnote in the Afghanistan story,” he said.

He welcomed three days of “relative calm” in Pakistan this week, but urged the country’s political leaders to unite “against its real enemy which is domestic terrorism.”

Obama has committed an additional 17,000 US troops to Afghanistan to break a stalemate against the Taliban and other insurgents.

He wants European nations to commit more troops, too, but is unlikely to win any promises by EU leaders meeting on Thursday and Friday.—AP
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