Failure to support Afghans would haunt West - Rice

STELLARTON, Nova Scotia, Sep 12 (Reuters) Afghanistan will ''come back to haunt us'' if the West fails to support its pursuit of security and democracy, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said today.

With the Canadian government under pressure from the left to withdraw its peacekeeping forces from Afghanistan, Rice thanked Canada for deploying troops there, and ruefully recalled a U.S.

decision to abandon the country after the Soviet Union withdrew in 1989.

''We all came to pay for that... We left Afghanistan to its own devices. If we should have learned anything, it is that if you allow that kind of vacuum, if you allow a failed state in that strategic a location, you're going to pay for it,'' Rice said in a news conference with Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay.

''I know that there is a sacrifice and I know that it's hard work ... but I just urge us to think about the alternative -- an Afghanistan that does not complete its democratic evolution and become a stable terrorist-fighting state is going to come back to haunt us.'' Some critics say the United States and its allies have failed to send enough troops and aid money to ensure Afghanistan's stability after U.S.-led forces in late 2001 toppled the Taliban regime, which harbored al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.

Western forces are currently encountering strong resistance as they seek to push back Taliban forces in the south of the country, where 2,300 Canadian troops are based.

Thirty-two Canadian soldiers have now died in the country, leading some Canadian politicians on the left to call for a withdrawal, which the Conservative government has rejected.

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