万花筒 2009-12-04&12-06 布朗、卡梅隆议会激辩（在线收听）

The weekend, he said he was looking a transferring at least five Afghan provinces to lead Afghan control by the end of 2010, including parts of Helmand. This was widely interpreted as a commitment to start the withdrawal of British troops in 2010. Well, Prime Minister shakes his head, that is how it was reported on every single media outlet, but, and this is a…, well, this will be a good opportunity for the Prime Minister to clarify this issue. President Obama said the process of transferring forces out of Afghanistan would not even begin until the middle of 2011. It is important we don’t give false expectations to British troops or mixed messages to anybody else, so, can the Prime Minister clarify whether he would expect British troop numbers to start with reducing in 2010 or 2011?

Mr. Speaker, I made it absolutely clear at the press conference that if you read the full transcript or he would know that there was no question, there was no question of us withdrawing our British troops until the point that we were sure that the Afghans could take over security control themselves. Now even if one or two parts of the district or province are transferred in 2010, we will continue to have our troops in Afghanistan at that point. My point earlier was that by 2011 there will be over 300,000 troops both Afghanistan, American, British and coalition troops and that is the point to which the balance between Afghan forces and British, American and coalition troops will start to change.