London - British and other NATO forces in southern Afghanistan do not have the "luxury of time" on their side in the fight against the Taliban, a British general due to take charge of the troops warned Friday. Major General Nick Carter, who will take charge of 45,000 troops in the region in six weeks' time, said there was an opportunity to "make a difference" in the next year.
"But I absolutely acknowledge that time is not on our side, and we have got to show positive trends as quickly as we possibly can," Carter said in a BBC interview.
His warning came as Britain's opposition Liberal Democrats called for a rethink of current NATO policy in Afghanistan.
In a joint article in the Guardian newspaper, party leader Nick Clegg and former leader Paddy Ashdown accused NATO of being "all over the place" in their Afghan strategy.
The main problem was the "lack of a unified international plan" for Afghanistan, they said.
Public support for the war was eroding "at a frightening rate," the Liberal leaders said in the article, published on the eve of the party's annual conference in Bournemouth.
The article said the central failure in Afghanistan was the absence of a "clear international strategy," with each country's forces focusing on their own patch.
Clegg and Ashdown suggested that the military tactics should be refocused from rural areas to cities, as air power and special forces might be needed to protect Kabul from future Taliban attack.
"It is not yet lost in Afghanistan. Not quite. We are in the territory of the last chance. There will be no more," they said.
Meanwhile, Carter said he was determined to seize the initiative from the Taliban by separating insurgents from the civilian population both "physically and mentally."
Civilians needed to be persuaded that coalition forces deserved support, not insurgents.
"I think that it will happen slowly, but my goodness me, there'll be a tipping point when the population will suddenly realize that it's worth being with its government institutions, rather than with the insurgent."
He admitted that roadside bombs were causing significant difficulties for NATO and said he hoped Afghan citizens would increasingly want to tell NATO where they were hidden.
Carter made clear that his strategy will involve far closer cooperation with the Afghan security forces in a bid to raise their standards.
When asked if he would talk to moderate Taliban fighters, he said "counter insurgencies are about winning an argument" and that "if we can talk to people then that may well be a quicker solution than shooting them."
