Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari claimed yesterday the Taliban were winning the war in Afghanistan.

Mr Zardari said: “We have lost the battle to conquer the heart and soul” of the Afghan people.

In an interview in the French newspaper Le Monde, he said the coalition “underestimated the situation on the ground and was not conscious of the scale of the problem.”

Mr Zardari, who was in Paris on the first stage of a European tour that took him to London yesterday, said military reinforcements were only a small part of the solution.

He also warned there would be no quick fix to the problems in Afghanistan. “The action of the international community must be long term,” he said.

Mr Zardari is in Europe amid growing concern that some elements in Pakistan’s intelligence service and military maintain links to known terrorists.

Wikileaks, the self-styled online whistle-blower, recently posted leaked US military documents that alleged Pakistan’s unwillingness to sever its historical ties to the Taliban and deny Taliban fighters sanctuary along the border between the two nations.