Updated on
Summary
Britain has offered to host an international conference to set a timetable for transferring security to Afghan forces from 2010, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said. The Prime Minister spoke at the Lord Mayor's Banquet at Guildhall. He said he had offered London as a venue for the meeting, which could take place as early as January next year. We should set a timetable for transferring districts to Afghan control starting next year in 2010. It is only when the Afghans are able to defend the security of their own people and deny the territory of Afghanistan as a base for terrorists, that our strategy of 'Afghanisation' will have succeeded and our troops can come home, Gordon Brown said. Britain has 9,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, second only to the United States. And this year has proven the deadliest year yet. He said seven of the top dozen figures in al Qaeda have been killed since January 2008, thanks to the mission in Afghanistan. And the Prime Minister insisted action in Afghanistan and Pakistan is necessary because al-Qaeda is still the biggest threat to Britain's security.
