MANILA: President Donald Trump has asked his advisers “tough questions” about American strategy in Afghanistan and is not willing to continue on as before, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Monday.
The White House has launched a review of the US plan for Afghanistan after 16 years of war, and reports suggest that Trump’s national security team is divided on whether to send more troops or to pull out.
Speaking in Manila on the sidelines of a regional security forum, Tillerson did not reveal his own advice to the president — but said Trump would not be content with continuing the fight as before.
“The president is not willing to accept that, so he is asking some tough questions,” Tillerson told reporters.
Tillerson said the president’s National Security Council has met three times on the issue and that Vice President Mike Pence has joined Trump in taking a close interest in the strategy review.
“The president is asking some very, very pointed questions, and I think good questions that he should be asking,” Tillerson said.
“And perhaps these are questions that no-one has been willing to raise in the past,” he continued.
“So we want to give him good thorough answers and good thorough analysis to go with that — a very clear-eyed view, a very realistic view of what the future is likely to look like.”
Trump’s generals have called the Afghan conflict a “stalemate” and even after years of intensive help from the US and other NATO nations, Afghanistan’s security forces are still struggling to hold back an emboldened Taliban.
In an early move to address the situation, Trump gave his Pentagon chief, former general Jim Mattis, broad powers to set troop numbers. But several months later the level remains stuck at about 8,400 US and about 5,000 NATO troops.
Mattis wants to wait until the White House has come up with a coherent strategy for not just Afghanistan but the broader region, notably Pakistan and how it deals with terror groups, before he commits to adjustments.
But reports have suggested that other Trump advisers, including his influential strategy chief Steve Bannon, favor cutting American losses by pulling out or sending private military contractors to replace troops.
“How does this all play out and where does this go?” Tillerson asked, rhetorically.
“It’s one thing to say we’re just going to keep fighting because there’s no other options. There are always other options,” he said.
“And so that’s what the president’s asked us to fully explore.”
Trump asks ‘tough questions’ on Afghan mission: Tillerson
Trump asks ‘tough questions’ on Afghan mission: Tillerson
UK child killer Ian Huntley dies after prison attack: police
- Huntley murdered 10-year-old girls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in eastern England in 2002
- He suffered serious injuries when he was assaulted at Frankland maximum security prison in the northeastern English city of Durham on Feb. 26
LONDON: One of Britain’s most notorious child killers, Ian Huntley, died on Saturday following an attack in prison where he was serving a life sentence, police said.
Huntley murdered 10-year-old girls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in eastern England in 2002, in a case that horrified the country.
Fifty-two-year-old Huntley suffered serious injuries when he was assaulted at Frankland maximum security prison in the northeastern English city of Durham on Feb. 26.
He “died in hospital this morning,” a spokesperson for the local police force said in a statement emailed to AFP.
A spokesperson for the government’s justice ministry said the double murder of Holly and Jessica “remains one of the most shocking and devastating cases in our nation’s history, and our thoughts are with their families.”
Huntley killed the two best friends after they left a family barbecue to buy sweets in the village of Soham, Cambridgeshire, on Aug. 4 2002.
Their disappearance sparked a massive search involving hundreds of police officers and appeals for help.
A photograph of the two girls wearing matching Manchester United football tops became instantly recognizable to many Britons.
Their bodies were found almost two weeks later, dumped in a ditch several miles away.
Huntley, then a 28-year-old school caretaker, aroused the suspicion of police after he gave media interviews claiming to be concerned for the girls’ welfare.
He denied murdering them but was convicted at trial in 2003.
His girlfriend at the time, Maxine Carr a teaching assistant at the girls’ school, gave Huntley a false alibi and was jailed for perverting the course of justice. She now lives under a new identity.
Revelations that Huntley had been the subject of prior rape and sexual assault complaints led to the establishment of criminal checks for anyone working with children.
He had been attacked before in prison, most seriously in 2005 and 2010.
“A police investigation into the circumstances of the incident is ongoing,” the spokesperson said, adding that prosecutors would consider bringing charges against his assailant.
