Prime minister admits Afghanistan will be left with 'huge developmental problems' when troops withdraw by 2014
Britain and the US will leave Afghanistan without a "perfect democracy" in place and with "huge developmental problems" when troops end all combat operations in 2014, David Cameron admitted.
As he flew to Washington for the start of a three-day official visit to the US, the prime minister defended the draw down of troops by saying that people on both sides of the Atlantic are demanding an "endgame".
Afghanistan will be the main item on the agenda at a meeting on Wednesdaybetween Cameron and Barack Obama in the Oval Office on the main day of the visit. They will be joined by the foreign minister, William Hague, and the chancellor, George Osborne, and their US counterparts, Hillary Clinton and Tim Geithner.
British officials say Cameron is being accorded the grandest welcome of any world leader in Washington this year, even though he is not a head of state. He will be greeted by a 19-gun salute, and 6,000 US officials and military personnel will be present when Obama officially receives him on the south lawn of the White House on Wednesday morning.
Obama, who kicked off the visit on an informal note by taking Cameron with him on Air Force One to watch a college basketball game in Ohio on Tuesday night, will host the prime minister and his wife at a state dinner on Wednesday. A string of British celebrities, including the Downton Abbey actor Hugh Bonneville and the Apple designer Sir Jonathan Ive, will attend.
During the day, the president and prime minister will attempt to show a united front on Afghanistan, the uprising in Syria and Iran's nuclear programme. Cameron said on Tuesday that he and Obama would take stock on Afghanistan after a US soldier shot dead 16 Afghan civilians on Sunday. Obama pledged to hold a thorough investigation into the shootings as he said the Pentagon would follow the facts "wherever they lead us".
In his first public remarks since the shootings, the president said on Tuesday: "The United States takes this as seriously as if this was our own citizens and our own children who were murdered. It's not who we are as a country, and it does not represent our military."
Cameron expressed horror at the shootings, but said Britain and the US would not alter their timetable for withdrawal as they work "absolutely in lockstep" to end Nato's "lead combat role" by the middle of 2013, in favour of a "support combat role", and withdraw all combat troops by the end of 2014.
Speaking on board his chartered British Airways plane to Washington, Cameron said: "Obviously we will need to work out how best to handle things after the recent events. But they should not put us off track. We have a transition which we should stick to and deliver."
He added that he and Obama would look beyond 2014, when a small British force is due to remain in Afghanistan to run a Sandhurst-style officer training academy. Cameron gave Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, a personal commitment that Britain would take the lead in establishing an academy.
But he acknowledged Britain and the US would be leaving a far from perfect country. "I think people want an endgame," Cameron said, as he explained the need to withdraw troops after more than a decade in Afghanistan. "They want to know that our troops are going to come home, they have been there a very long time.
"What I define as doing the job is leaving Afghanistan looking after its own security, not being a haven for terror, without the involvement of foreign troops. That should be our goal so that the British public, our troops and the Afghan government, frankly, know there's an end to this. I accept it won't be a perfect democracy. There will be huge development problems."
The president said his administration would press ahead with the withdrawal of 23,000 troops by the autumn – the last of the "surge" forces. There will then be 68,000 US troops left in the country.
Obama said in the White House Rose Garden: "There's no question that we face a difficult challenge in Afghanistan. I'm confident we can continue the work of meeting our objectives, protecting our country, and responsibly bringing this war to a close."
Cameron confirmed that he and Obama would also be discussing how to remove President Bashar al-Assad from power in Syria, though this would be without military intervention and without fresh UN sanctions. Russia and China would veto any moves on both fronts.
A year into the Syrian uprising, Cameron indicated that he would be willing to accept a transition within the regime when he said it would be unrealistic to expect a revolution.
He said: "We're all frustrated by Syria. What's happening in Homs is completely appalling. The shortest way of ending the violence is a transition where Assad goes, rather than a revolution from the bottom."