By KUNA
Kabul : US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British Foreign secretary David Miliband arrived here on a surprise visit Thursday morning.
The two officials are scheduled to meet Afghan President Hamid Karzai at his Presidential Palace.
This is an unannounced visit. However, Wednesday evening, the president’s press office informed local media offices of a press conference by Karzai set for Thursday afternoon.
The US and British foreign secretaries are visiting Afghanistan at a time when rumours of rift in the NATO alliance over the Afghanistan operation are ripe in the international press.
While attending an international conference in Davos about a week back, Afghan President Hamid Karzai accused the British troops for “their failure” to contain the Taliban in his country’s Helmand province.
The militants had captured a district in that province, which was recaptured only three months back by the British and Afghan troops.
At the same time, reports are also appearing in the international media showning Germany’s reluctance to send more troops or shift its existing forces to the volatile south from the comparatively peaceful north.
At the moment, German troops are stationed in the north, French are mostly based in the central capital Kabul while Turkish are running a provincial reconstruction team in the central province of Maidan Wardak. All those areas are comparatively calm from security point of view.
The British, Canadians, Americans, Dutch, Australian and a small number of troops from other NATO countries are operating in the south and the southeast, considered strongholds of the anti-government Taliban militants.