Modi Warns U.S. to Avoid Iraq 'Mistake' in Afghanistan

W460

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi warned the United States Monday not to repeat its "mistake" in Iraq by pulling out of Afghanistan too quickly.

Modi, who is due to meet President Barack Obama later on Monday, said U.S. forces had forged "stability" in Afghanistan that had helped the country "march" towards "a good result."

"But we have requested America ... please do not repeat the mistake that you made in Iraq," Modi said at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

"Because after such a rapid withdrawal in Iraq, (and) what happened there, the withdrawal process in Afghanistan should be very slow. Let it stand on its own, and only then can you stop the Taliban lifting its head there," Modi, speaking in Hindi, said through a translator.

Modi's remarks came on the day on which Afghanistan's new government indicated that it would sign a bilateral security agreement with the United States that will allow a residual NATO force to remain behind when Western combat operations end in the country before the end of the year.

Under the deal, the US deployment in Afghanistan will be scaled back to around 9,800 by the start of 2015.

Those forces will be halved by the end of 2015, before being reduced to a normal embassy presence by the end of 2016.

Modi did not take a position on that timetable but stressed that India was concerned that stability in Afghanistan should not be squandered.

Obama said in an interview aired Sunday that U.S. intelligence agencies had underestimated the swift rise of the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria and had overestimated the capacity of Baghdad's forces to take them on.

Modi also called on the world to unite to fight a "draconian" wave of terrorism.

"We have faced this problem for 40 years and there is no limit," Modi said.

The new Indian leader, wowing crowds on his first official visit to the United States, visits the White House at a time when Obama is piecing together a broad international coalition to confront IS jihadists.

Modi said that videos of U.S. journalists having their throats cut by Islamic State operatives were a "deformity" of humanity, and symptomatic of a new 21st century reality.

"Terrorism is an enemy of humanity and anybody who believes in humanity, they all need to come together," he said.

Modi did not however offer India's position on Obama's anti-IS coalition.

But the prime minister, who leads the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, said his own country had suffered deeply from terrorism over the years. He stressed however that it was not "homegrown" and argued that al-Qaida had always failed to recruit Indian Muslims to its ranks.

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