LOC23:02
20:02 GMT
transition nears
WASHINGTON, Oct 29 (KUNA) -- The U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke on
Friday assured the U.S. will not repeat the same mistakes of abandoning
Afghanistan or open-ended troop deployment as transition process nears.
Holbrooke, U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, said he was
"quite comfortable with pressing for full implementation of the transitional
process, in an orderly way."
President Hamid Karzai will announce the start of the transitional process
on November 15th. The upcoming announcement will come less than a week before
Karzais scheduled trip to Lisbon for the summit for the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) member-states aimed at kick starting the process of
returning control of Afghanistan to local security forces from 2011. U.
S. President Barack Obama and leaders from the NATO and all the countries
within the International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) will be in
attendance.
"It's an orderly transition over a number of years for the Afghans, and it
will happen in all fields. We are never repeating the mistake of 1989 and
abandoning Afghanistan; nor are we going to have an open-ended troop
commitment, because no war can go on indefinitely, and Afghanistan cannot bear
the pain and costs of a continued war indefinitely," Holbrooke asserted.
"We now are going to work out the details, between now and November 15th,
for an orderly transition," he added. (end).
hy.tg
KUNA 292302 Oct 10NNNN