Gordon Brown aims to set Afghan goals for troops' exit

Britain aims to set clear goals in Afghanistan at top-level talks next year to help bring its troops home, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said yesterday, amid public anger at the rising death toll.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, UN chief Ban Ki-moon and all major contributors to the coalition fighting in Afghanistan, as well as regional neighbours, will be invited to the London conference on January 28.

"What we need is a political push to match the military push we're now agreeing to," Brown told reporters on the sidelines of a Commonwealth summit in Trinidad.

Karzai has to realise "that there will be milestones by which he's going to be judged and he's got to accept that there will be benchmarks which the international community will set," he added.

He said this before President Barack Obama was to unveil a new strategy on Afghanistan on Tuesday, when he is expected to order the deployment of over 30,000 fresh US troops to the conflict.

But the president, who has vowed to "finish the job" in Afghanistan, will also lay out an exit strategy, with some 68,000 US troops already on the ground fighting a strengthened Taliban insurgency now in its ninth year.

Karzai, re-elected to a second term after fraud-tainted elections, is coming under growing pressure to prove his government is a reliable partner as the conflict bogs down.

Ban, appearing with Brown, told reporters the foreign-minister level London conference was "a timely initiative to allow for a high-level dialogue in the post-electoral climate in Afghanistan."

Brown hopes the talks will draw up clear benchmarks for future military and political strategy in Afghanistan for 2010 and beyond.

He plans to build up Afghan forces to 50,000, and committed Britain to training 5,000 alone in Helmand province by the end of 2010.