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Summary
Gordon Brown has said that troops withdrawal from Afghanistan would be started during the current year.Addressing the Afghan Conference, Brown termed 2009 as a difficult year in terms of Afghanistan situation, and added that the British forces would leave Afghanistan after the Afghan forces were fully trained.He noted that as many as 38 countries have agreed to send their troops to Afghan soil.He said that the number of Afghan army would be around 0.134million, and called for increasing the number of Afghan army and police to 0.3million.Brown said the process of power shift to Afghans was underway. The conference on Afghanistan is being attended by 70 other countries including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Britain, Turkey and Germany.BackgroundBonn Conference 2001In December 2001, during the American invasion of Afghanistan, the German city of Bonn hosted a conference of anti-Taliban allies and regional leaders to choose the leader of an Afghan Transitional Authority -- widely known as the Bonn Conference. The Conference chose Hamid Karzai, who was subsequently elected President in 2004.2006 Conference In 2006, 66 states and 15 international organizations participated in the London Conference on Afghanistan, which was chaired by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The government of Afghanistan provided an overview of developments in the country and of its strategies, priorities and plans for economic and political development in the following five years.
