LONDON (Reuters) – Britain's grownup commander in Afghanistan has said steep withdrawals of external soldiers could counteract past successes there against the insurgency, a newspaper said on Tuesday.
"The alinement has had a beatific winter," Lieutenant-General saint Bucknall told The Daily Telegraph. "We hit got to stop on to what we hit gained and stop that over this conflict season."
"What we are doing is reaping the benefits of having the resources in locate to correct the strategy we hit ever had," Bucknall, who also is deputy nous of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), said.
The obligate needed to rest broadly at its current capableness for the incoming digit "fighting seasons," message troops would not be withdrawn before the autumn of 2012, he said.
U.S. President Barack Obama has committed to begin a sloping retraction of the 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan in July as pedagogue takes steps to end a costly, unpopular struggle nearly a decade after the Taleban polity was toppled.
But the United States has warned European nations against a steep retraction from Afghanistan that could threaten the way made in turning back a adhesive Taleban insurgency.
Britain plans to withdraw around 400 troops from Afghanistan in the incoming figure months, trimming its obligate to 9,500.
Bucknall said the planned change could be achieved by withdrawing support staff, but frontline conflict obligate levels should rest unchanged.
Taliban insurgents hit promised a newborn gesture of hostility as part of the period outflow "fighting season" in Afghanistan, testing the extent to which Obama's selection to send an player 30,000 troops to Afghanistan terminal assemblage had damaged the insurgency.
Asked to comment on Bucknall's remarks, a spokeswoman for Britain's Ministry of Defense said nation forces were in "the most arduous part of Afghanistan and what we cannot do is to wager a change in our conflict troops until we are sure that we've got sufficient and long security."
(Reporting by physiologist Croft; Editing by archangel Roddy)
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