The influence of the Taliban is not on the increase in Afghanistan’s Kunduz province, where the Netherlands is conducting a police-training mission, says Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal. His statement is based on all available information.

He also knows of no information to suggest that Talban units have infiltrated parts of the Afghan security services with which Dutch personnel work or have worked. The minister’s comments are contained in a letter to parliament.

MPs had tabled questions on a secret NATO report. The BBC says the report states that Afghan police officers and troops co-operate with the Taliban and that support for the fundamentalist rebels remains steady among the Afghan population as a whole.

It is also reported that the influence of the Taliban is growing in areas where NATO’s ISAF troops have handed over responsibility for security to their Afghan counterparts. Mr Rosenthal, however, says this is a picture which he does not recognise. The Netherlands is privy to the report but will reveal nothing of its contents because it is secret.

Mr Rosenthal says the position of the Taliban becomes stronger the more local authorities fail. President Hamid Karzai’s government therefore has to “show even more decisiveness in improving public administration in order to carry on functioning as a legitimate and credible government,” writes Mr Rosenthal. “Broadly speaking, there’s not a single reason why the population should want to return to the terror and extremism of the Taliban regime of over a decade ago.”

(mw)

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