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Afghanistan live news: Joe Biden says there was no way to exit without ‘chaos’

Ousted president Ashraf Ghani confirms he is in UAE; UN says it will still support Afghan people; at least one dead after clash over Taliban flag

  • Afghan ex-president in talks with Taliban over transfer of power
  • Tories rebuke Boris Johnson over ‘catastrophic’ Afghanistan failure
  • Analysis: Taliban face financial crisis without access to foreign reserves
  • Scholarship alumni urge No 10 to speed up evacuation of students
  • ‘We kept hearing gunshots’: my chaotic escape from Kabul’s airport

Joe Biden has said he could not see a way to withdraw from Afghanistan without “chaos ensuing”.

In an exclusive interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, and the president’s first since the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban, President Joe Biden defended his decision to withdraw troops when he did.

No, I don’t think it could have been handled in a way that, we’re gonna go back in hindsight and look – but the idea that somehow, there’s a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing, I don’t know how that happens. I don’t know how that happened.

What are they doing now? They’re cooperating, letting American citizens get out, American personnel get out, embassies get out, etc … we’re having some more difficulty having those who helped us when we were in there.

Look, it was a simple choice, George. When you had the government of Afghanistan, the leader of that government, get in a plane and taking off and going to another country; when you saw the significant collapse of the Afghan troops we had trained, up to 300,000 of them, just leaving their equipment and taking off … That’s simply what happened. And so the question was, in the beginning, the threshold question was, do we commit to leave within the timeframe we set, do we extend it to Sept. 1, or do we put significantly more troops in?

Britain fears US forces may pull out of Kabul international airport within days, putting it at risk of closure and raising concerns over the emergency airlift of thousands of people from Afghanistan.

Whitehall and security sources said they could not guarantee how long the US would keep its contingent of 6,000 troops on the ground and cautioned that the UK could not continue the rescue without their presence. They also indicated Britain was not engaging with the Taliban directly over security or other issues after the militant group seized the Afghan capital.

Related: Britain fears US forces may pull out of Kabul airport within days

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