Blinken: Not in US interests to stay in Afghanistan

KABUL • US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday said it was not in America's interests to remain in Afghanistan, as countries called for an emergency United Nations Security Council meeting following news that the Taleban had reached the capital Kabul.

Mr Blinken said Washington had invested billions of dollars over four United States administrations in Afghan government forces, giving them advantages over the Taleban, but that they failed to beat back the militant group's advance.

"The fact of the matter is we've seen that force has been unable to defend the country," he told CNN. "And that has happened more quickly than we anticipated."

Mr Blinken rejected comparisons with the chaotic American departure from Saigon in 1975 as the Vietnam War drew to a close.

"This is not Saigon," he told ABC. "The fact of the matter is this: We went to Afghanistan 20 years ago with one mission in mind. That was to deal with the people that attacked us on Sept 11. That mission has been successful."

Russia is working with other countries to hold an emergency UN Security Council meeting on Afghanistan, Russian Foreign Ministry official Zamir Kabulov said yesterday.

Russia is one of five permanent members of the UN Security Council, along with the US, Britain, France and China.

Mr Kabulov said Moscow does not plan to evacuate its embassy in Kabul, and that the Taleban had offered Russia and other countries - which he did not name - security assurances for their missions there.

In Britain, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson yesterday recalled Parliament from its summer break for urgent debate on the situation in Afghanistan, his office said.

A Downing Street spokesman said Mr Johnson had called a meeting of the COBR emergencies committee to discuss what Britain should do next. It was the second such meeting in three days.

Britain lost 457 troops fighting in the two-decade-long war, and some British politicians have in recent days called for a last-ditch intervention in Afghanistan.

"Just because the Americans won't (intervene) does not mean to say that we should be tied to the thinking, the political judgment - particularly when it is so wrong - of our closest security ally," Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood, chairman of the Commons Defence Committee, told Times Radio.

"We could prevent this, otherwise history will judge us very, very harshly in not stepping in."

Mr Ellwood said the British government could deploy the Royal Navy's HMS Queen Elizabeth carrier strike group to provide air support in Afghanistan.

Mr Johnson last Friday vowed that Britain would not "turn our backs" on Afghanistan, but said those calling for an intervention "have got to be realistic about the power of the UK or any power to impose a military solution - a combat solution - in Afghanistan".

REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE