New Zealand Labour leader slams Afghan troops' decision

Sep 22, 2009, 2:32 GMT

Wellington - New Zealand's opposition Labour Party on Tuesday attacked the government's decision to send 71 combat troops to Afghanistan, saying it could be turning into another Vietnam.

Labour leader Phil Goff cited the leaked report of the top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, that more troops were needed to overcome the risk of 'an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.'

'That's reminiscent of the days of the Vietnam War, when all we need to do to win this war is send thousands of troops in,' he told Radio New Zealand. 'The truth is, the war is not going well.'

Goff was foreign minister in the 1999-2008 Labour government that three times sent squads of its elite Special Air Services soldiers to Afghanistan, but he said the situation had changed significantly since the last deployment in 2005.

The current Afghan regime of President Hamid Karzai was 'endemically corrupt,' and a growing number of people in New Zealand and elsewhere in the world were concerned 'that we would be sending our people to die for a regime that we don't believe is an effective governor of Afghanistan,' Goff said.

Prime Minister John Key, whose conservative National Party came to power in November, announced Monday that 71 of its special forces troops had arrived last week in Afghanistan to join the US-led NATO force. Key's government has announced that it will wind down another group of about 130 New Zealand troops, which the former Labour government committed to work on civilian reconstruction projects in central Afghanistan's Bamiyan province after next year.

Goff said that Labour had declined requests to send more SAS soldiers because 'we were increasingly concerned that al-Qaeda was no longer the issue - rather it was degenerating into a local conflict between bands of Taliban and the Karzai administration.'

'We decided after 2005 that the more effective contribution for New Zealand was the provincial reconstruction team (PRT), where our troops in Bamiyan were doing a good job and were supported by the local people,' he said.

Key told reporters Monday that New Zealand was supporting the current administration to try to stabilize Afghanistan despite doubts about Karzai's lead in preliminary results from August's presidential election, amid charges of election fraud.

Questioned at a news conference about the legitimacy of Karzai's government, Key said: 'I read the papers like everyone else, but I have not received any official advice that can corroborate any of the stories I have seen written in the papers.'

He described Afghanistan as an 'historical hotbed of terrorism.'

'The aim here is to try and stabilize Afghanistan,' Key said. 'I think the alternative is that we are left with a country where control is ceded to the Taliban, where in all probability more terrorist activities will be planned and schemes will be hatched, and I don't believe that's in the world's best interests.'

Key said a task group of the New Zealand troops would be deployed for 12 to 18 months. He refused to specify what their mission was but said the special-forces soldiers would not be allowed to extend their operations into Pakistan.