Toronto, June 27: US President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron said on Saturday that the troubled Afghanistan war must show progress this year.
The two leaders, concluding their first meeting since the conservative British leader took power last month with a coalition government, said their nations have the right strategy in Afghanistan.
“This period that we are in is going to be critical,” Obama said.
“Making progress this year, putting everything we have into getting it right this year is vitally important,” Cameron said.
With a resurgent Taliban, major US-led offensives planned and June already the deadliest month of the nine-year-old Afghanistan war, the fight is considered to be at a critical juncture.
Earlier, Obama and Cameron were part of a statement from the summit of the leading eight industrial democracies that sketched out a strategy for enabling Afghanistan security forces to take over increased responsibility for the country within five years. Cameron also said separately, in a television interview, that there would likely be no British troops in Afghanistan five years from now.
Obama began his day by concluding the so-called G-8 summit at a resort in Canada’s forested Muskoka lakes region, then flew to Toronto for a second, expanded summit of the Group of 20 nations. Those larger meetings, mostly being held on Sunday, were getting underway with a dinner.
In between, Obama was meeting with important foreign counterparts one by one on the sidelines, including Cameron, South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak and Chinese President Hu Jintao.
The meeting between Obama and Cameron had a collegial feel after the president gave his British ally a ride back to Toronto on his specially outfitted presidential helicopter. “He threatened to send me a bill,” Cameron joked. “But I said times are very tight in the UK, so I’ll have to take that as a free lift.”
The two had been expected to address the difficulties that the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has introduced into the American-British relationship.
–Agencies–