By IRNA,
London : Britain is carrying out a review of its strategy in Afghanistan, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has confirmed.
“We’re looking anew at the Afghanistan policy,” Brown told MPs in a debate on the Queen’s Speech at the beginning of a new parliamentary year on Wednesday.
He said that ministers and officials from the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development were reviewing many facets of Britain’s work in Afghanistan.
In particular, the review was considering issues like Afghanistan’s porous border with Pakistan, and the need for more helicopters to support British troops in southern Afghanistan, the prime minister said.
Speculation is that the UK government is reluctantly being forced to further boost its 8,100 deployment, mostly based in Helmand province.
During a visit to Afghanistan last week, Foreign Secretary David Miliband admitted that Britain would consider any request from US president-elect Barack Obama to send more troops.
Earlier this week, the Chief of Defense Staff Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup also conceded that more British troops are likely to go to Afghanistan.
But Stirrup insisted the new deployment must be smaller than the remaining 4,000 troops in Iraq, which are due to be withdrawn from next spring.
In a speech to the Royal United Services Institute in London on Tuesday, the Air Chief Marshal gave a grim assessment of Nato’s record in Afghanistan, saying it had “not done enough” this year.