UK PM Boris Johnson holds Afghanistan crisis talks, recalls parliament

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was on Sunday (Aug 15) to hold further crisis talks on Afghanistan, his office said, as he recalled Parliament from its summer break.

A Downing Street spokesperson said Mr Johnson had called a meeting of the COBR emergencies committee to discuss the situation, which follows the withdrawal of US-led forces, the second such meeting in three days.

Parliament on Sunday said it had approved Mr Johnson’s request to call back MPs on Wednesday for urgent debate on what Britain, which lost 457 troops in the two-decade long war, should do next.

Taleban fighters were on the outskirts of Kabul on Sunday and on the brink of a complete military takeover of Afghanistan, leading to British politicians to call for a last-ditch intervention.

Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood, chairman of the Commons Defence Committee, urged Mr Johnson to “think again” about stepping in.

“We have an ever-shrinking window of opportunity to recognise where this country is going as a failed state,” he told Times Radio.

“Just because the Americans won’t, does not mean to say that we should be tied to the thinking, the political judgement – particularly when it is so wrong – of our closest security ally.

“We could prevent this, otherwise history will judge us very, very harshly in not stepping in,” he warned.

Mr Ellwood said the government could deploy the Royal Navy’s HMS Queen Elizabeth carrier strike group to provide air support.

The Foreign Office said on Sunday that Britain had “temporarily suspended most operations” at its embassy in Kabul and was doing “all we can to enable remaining British nationals, and those Afghans who have worked for us and who are eligible for relocation, to leave Afghanistan”.

Most of the remaining British troops assigned to the Nato mission in Afghanistan left last month, according to Mr Johnson.