JOIN USBritain has the second-biggest foreign troop contingent in Afghanistan after the United States, and Cameron, who was on his sixth visit to Afghanistan, has said he wants British troops out of combat roles by 2015.
While he has said before he wants that process to begin next year, British commanders have since tried to play down the prospect of any major withdrawals in early 2011, saying it would depend on the readiness of Afghan forces to take over and other conditions on the ground. “What I have seen on this visit gives me confidence that our plans for transition are achievable beginning early next year,” Cameron told a news conference in Kabul alongside Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
As Cameron and Karzai spoke, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates arrived at the sprawling Bagram Air Base just north of the capital, Kabul.
Gates’s latest visit comes just as US President Barack Obama reviews his Afghanistan war strategy, and a few days after the president made a trip himself to Afghanistan. Gates will also meet Karzai and US and Nato commanders.
“(The trip) is taking place just as the National Security Council is in the midst of its evaluation of that strategy, so clearly what the secretary learns here, what he sees here, what he takes from here, will inform the discussion that is taking place back in Washington,” Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell told reporters.