British Defense Secretary Des Browne was expected to announce yesterday that Britain will send more troops to southern Afghanistan, where six British soldiers have died fighting Taliban guerrillas in the past four weeks.
A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Defense in London said Browne would make a statement to parliament after military commanders asked last week for more backup.
"He said [last] Thursday ... that additional requests had been made, that he was considering those as a matter of urgency and he would ... announce the results as soon as possible," she said. "That is what he is doing today."
Around 3,200 British troops are already in Afghanistan spearheading a major expansion of NATO peacekeepers into volatile areas in the south which have seen some of the worst fighting since US-backed forces toppled the Taliban in 2001.
The British government has long said the mission's emphasis is on reconstruction, not counter-insurgent warfare. But in an interview on Saturday, Browne said the troops' deployment had "energized" the Taliban enemy.
"Clearly security is the number one concern in Afghanistan. Without security it's hard for development to take place," Benn said. "Britain is there to help the elected Afghan government and the people of Afghanistan to change their country for the better."
Meanwhile, coalition and Afghan forces killed four militants and recovered a large cache of weapons, pushing the death toll from a weekend of heavy fighting in southern Afghanistan to 20, the US-led coalition said yesterday.
One Canadian soldier died and two were wounded in the clashes in Kandahar province, where Afghan and coalition forces raided Taliban strongholds on Saturday and Sunday, officials said.
A coalition statement said four insurgents were killed and a joint Afghan-coalition patrol found mortar rounds, 120mm rockets and small arms in Panjwayi district on Sunday.
Also on Sunday, fighting in Zharew district left at least five Taliban militants dead, said coalition official Lieutenant Commander Mark MacIntyre. Canadian Corporal Anthony Boneca was killed and two other Canadian soldiers were wounded, he said.
Also on Sunday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai summoned a meeting of a special committee set up last month to address the country's most urgent security and reconstruction issues, a statement from his office said. The committee includes senior Afghan officials and representatives from the US-led coalition, NATO and the UN.
The statement blamed the current insecurity and "regular acts of terrorism" on a "variety of groups including those linked to international terrorist networks, fighters recruited from outside of Afghanistan and the opium industry."
In other violence on Sunday night, suspected Taliban militants ambushed an Afghan army convoy in Shinkay district of southern Zabul province, wounding one soldier.
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