A new focus

Afghanistan and the role of Nato was scheduled to be today’s big discussion at the Munich Security Conference.  The big hitters were here, Nato's secretary general, the Afghan president, but instead there's one thing everyone is still talking about.  And that's Iran.

 

The foreign minister left here saying the future was bright, the future was international co-operation.  But first thing on Sunday, back in Tehran, the Iranian president, not for the first time, muddied the waters.  Mahmoud Ahmedinejad has ordered his nuclear scientists to step up the uranium enrichment programme.  It's not what the Western powers wanted to hear.

 

I go out looking for reaction.  I find John Kerry, the former US presidential candidate as he’s leaving the conference hotel.  He may use a stick to help him walk, but he's tall and imposing, polite and informed. I tell him what has been said in Tehran.  He tells me “I think Iran keeps missing the global community's generous messages about how to defuse a crisis. He (Ahmendinejad) only seems to understand confrontation and he's on a good path to get it the way he's going. A nuclear Iran in it's current context is dangerous and unacceptable, that has been the policy of every nation that I know of that has been involved in trying to persuade Iran otherwise. So we'll just go steadily down the road towards the sanctions and see whether or not Iran can find some common sense or sanity.” 

 

His view is backed up by his US senate colleagues, Joe Lieberman and John McCain, who say talking with Iran is getting nowhere and the discussions have to be backed up with sanctions. 

 

Hamid Karzai finally takes the stage here. He has a lot to say and when they flash the light telling him his time his up, he jokes he has much more and perhaps they should switch it off.

 

He reveals the Afghans may look again at some form of conscription into the armed forces.

 

But his most telling point concerns civilians.  He warns the international forces they have to do more to prevent the killing of civilians. He told the conference: "We believe that the war on terror is not in the Afghan villages and homes. We believe this war on terror is in the sanctuaries, training grounds and the motivational factors and financial resources beyond the Afghan borders. Therefore ending operations in Afghan villages is what the Afghan people are seeking as a priority: ending raids at night on Afghan homes, ending the arrests of Afghans in their homes."

 

Afghanistan has dominated discussions here over the past eight years.  That Iran has claimed centre stage shows that perhaps, the international community has a new focus for its concern.