Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister update the House on her recent meetings in Lisbon, particularly with respect to the future strategy for the commitment to Afghanistan?

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As members of the House would be aware, I travelled to Lisbon on the weekend and attended there the meeting of the 48 countries who participate in the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. This was a NATO-ISAF summit. The summit was attended by President Karzai of Afghanistan, President Obama, Chancellor Merkel, Prime Minister Cameron and the President of France, Mr Sarkozy, among others. The purpose of this important meeting was to bring together ISAF partners to discuss and determine the future strategy in Afghanistan. Importantly, the meeting heard a report from General Petraeus, the supreme commander of the operations in Afghanistan. The message he very clearly gave to the meeting was that the momentum of the insurgency has been checked, that progress is being made and that we can now move to the process of transition where, place by place, security leadership will move from ISAF forces to local Afghan forces. Transition will happen place by place, depending on conditions on the ground, district by district, province by province. It will be a rigorous process and it will only occur when Afghan forces are able to take security leadership. As I have said to this House before, a condition of taking security leadership needs to be irreversibility—that is, we should not transition out only to transition back in.

The Lisbon meeting decided that transition should start in early 2011, with a target completion date across Afghanistan of 2014. That fits with President Karzai’s goal to have Afghan forces in security leadership in his country in 2014. The outcomes of the summit are welcome and the move into transition in early 2011 is a welcome step. But, as General Petraeus said, nothing in Afghanistan is easy. No transition date has been set for where we work in Oruzgan province. The best advice to us remains that we will be engaged in training there for two to four years to train the Afghan National Army. I echo President Obama’s words that training is the ticket to transition, and that is what we are doing in Oruzgan province. I have consistently said in this place, and I said it at the NATO-ISAF summit in Lisbon, we need to be realistic. We will stay engaged in Afghanistan in some form to the end of this decade at least. Building democracy is the work of a generation of Afghan people. The summit reemphasised the importance of supporting Afghanistan in an enduring way. I welcome the NATO enduring partnership with Afghanistan. Once again, to echo the words of President Obama, the people of Afghanistan need to stand up and take control of their country in the provision of security, but we will be standing alongside them.