Yahoo News Boris Johnson has ‘absolute’ confidence in Raab: ‘Government working round clock’
Boris Johnson gave Dominic Raab his backing after reports the Foreign Secretary missed a call while on holiday in Crete.
The Prime Minister defended the Foreign Secretary amid the criticism building around Raab enjoying a summer holiday in Greece at the same time the Taliban took over Afghanistan.
He said he “absolutely” had confidence in Raab when Mr Johnson was grilled by broadcasters about the situation in Afghanistan on Friday.
The whole government has been working “virtually” around the clock, Mr Johnson explained.
“I can tell you that the whole of the government has been working virtually around the clock hitting the phones to do what we can.” He told the cameras.
“I’m not going to pretend to you that it’s easy. As you can imagine, challenges are formidable.”
The Prime Minister answered questions about Mr Raab’s holiday as he spoke to cameras following a COBRA meeting.
Speaking out, Mr Johnson reassured everyone about the ongoing evacuations in Afghanistan.
“Yesterday we were able to get out about 1,000 people, today another 1,000 people,” he added.
“A lot of those are obviously UK eligible persons coming back to this country and a lot of them are people coming under the Afghanistan resettlement assistance programme, the ARAP (Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy).
“Those are the people, the interpreters and others, to whom we owe debts of gratitude and honour.
“We’ll continue to work as fast as we can over the next few days.”
It comes as more chaos erupted outside Kabul international airport on Friday and governments rushed to evacuate their citizens from Afghanistan.
Specially deployed US troops have been in control of the airport but access remains under the control of Taliban militants who reportedly have fired shots into the air to disperse crowds.
One Western official told the Reuters news agency: “It’s absolutely hectic and chaos out there.”
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