WASHINGTON, March 20: US President George W. Bush has said that the Taliban cannot be defeated until Afghanistan develops a society that marginalises them.

In an interview to the Pentagon channel broadcast on Thursday, Mr Bush urged America’s Nato allies to realise Afghanistan’s importance in the war against terror and bolster their presence in that country.

“Until a civil society develops that provides hope to the people, the Taliban will be a factor, so they are a factor now,” said Mr Bush.

But he dismissed the suggestion that the Taliban were strong enough to win the war or defeat the US military. “Are they wining? No, they cannot win,” he said. “Can they defeat this military? Absolutely not.”

The United States invaded Afghanistan six-and-a-half years ago and forced the Taliban regime to flee Kabul, but critics blame the Bush government for losing its focus on Afghanistan in 2003, when it invaded Iraq.

Since then the US has focused most of its military and economic resources on Iraq which, according to the critics, allowed the Taliban and Al Qaeda to regroup and re-establish themselves.

“The Taliban has not been defeated, they keep coming back,” acknowledged Mr Bush when asked to review the situation in Afghanistan more than six years after the US invasion.

“An enemy such as this gets defeated when two things happen: we bring their people to justice, as well as a society develops which marginalises them,” he added.

Mr Bush conceded that the military alone cannot defeat the Taliban or other similar groups. To defeat the Taliban, he said, the United States and its allies would have to provide an alternative that “competes with their ideology”.

Everybody in Afghanistan, he said, knew the Taliban ideology because they had lived under the Taliban but they also needed to see that there’s another, and a more hopeful, way for them to follow. “We are trying to help them realise there is another way, and a more hopeful life,” said Mr Bush while explaining how the United States plans to deal with the situation.

“And we are bolstering our troops there, to make sure that they are not able to intimidate the people to a point where a civil society and a free society cannot develop. So we have got work to do there.”

Mr Bush said the United States was not alone in Afghanistan as America’s Nato allies had also contributed troops to a multi-national force based there. “Some of them fight, some of them do not fight, but all of them make a contribution.”

Mr Bush said he was going to a Nato meeting in Romania next week and would urge US allies to bolster their presence in Afghanistan.