British Prime Minister David Cameron arrived in Afghanistan for talks with President Hamid Karzai yesterday, his first visit as prime minister to a country that his new coalition government has set as its top foreign policy priority.
In the month since he took office at the head of a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, Cameron has conducted an intensive assessment of the situation in Afghanistan where Britain has 9,500 troops, the second largest foreign contingent after that of the US.
Rising casualties — nearly 300 British soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since 2001 — are eroding public support for the war while its cost is straining Britain’s finances at a time when the new government is searching for deep spending cuts to rein in a gaping budget deficit.
“No one wants British troops that stay in Afghanistan for a day longer than is necessary,” Cameron told a joint news conference with Karzai at the presidential palace.
“What we want — and is our national security interest — is to hand over to an Afghanistan that is able to take control of its own security.”
The number of foreign troops in Afghanistan is about to peak at around 150,000 but the death of 18 international soldiers this week alone shows that the Taliban are at their strongest since they were overthrown in the 2001 US-led invasion.
In the past month, Karzai has visited Britain, three senior British ministers have made a fact-finding trip to Afghanistan and Cameron’s newly created National Security Council has devoted several sessions to the Afghan conflict.
The coalition government has said it will give US President Barack Obama’s counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan time to work, but British officials are looking at what could be done more effectively.
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