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British Prime Minister Visits Afghan Frontline
British Prime Minister in a surprise visit to southern Afghanistan on Sunday hailed the next months as critical.Prime Minister Gordon Brown arrived on a previously unannounced visit two weeks after ordering 500 extra British troops into the war alongside a surge of 30,000 American forces as part of a new US strategy. He held talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai at a military base in Kandahar, the birthplace of Taliban militants and one of the deadliest battlefields for foreign troops for the past eight years. "I think it's very important to say that the combined effort of allied forces with the Afghan government is the way we will defeat the insurgency, the way we will stop Al Qaeda having any space to operate in Afghanistan," he told a news conference with President Karzai. He arrived in the Afghan capital, Kabul, after his visit to Kandahar for further talks with Afghan officials. "I think the next few months are obviously critical," Brown earlier told reporters travelling with him. Brown has been more prominent than other Western leaders in voicing mounting criticism of the government of Karzai. The Afghan leader lashed back in an interview last week in Kabul, saying comments from the British Prime Minister were "very unfortunate and very artificial. It is extremely insulting". This year 100 British soldiers have been killed in the fiercest fighting of the eight-year-old war, fuelling opposition in London to the British forces' involvement. Brown has been a strong supporter of US President Barack Obama's new counter-insurgency strategy, which involves sending tens of thousands of additional troops and speeding up the training of Afghan forces. Other NATO allies, including Britain, have pledged an extra 7,000 troops to help turning around the stalemated mission in Afghanistan. Posted by: Fred 2009-12-14 |
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