ISLAMABAD: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown held talks in Pakistan on Monday after announcing a new strategy to tackle a “crucible of terrorism” on a visit to Kabul.
Brown met with Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari to discuss terror threats after visiting British troops in insurgency-plagued southern Afghanistan and meeting Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul.
“These border areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan are the breeding ground, the crucible of terrorism,” Brown told a news conference with Karzai.
“A chain of terror links these areas to the streets of many of the capital cities of the world,” Brown added.
“We wish to support the Pakistani authorities… in dealing with that terrorist threat and we will be discussing later today how we can work together… when I meet President Zardari in Pakistan,” he said.
The strategy announcement follows growing concern in the West over Taliban advances in Pakistan, which Washington has put at the heart of the fight against Al-Qaeda, and potential implications for the war in Afghanistan.
“Our approach to those countries is different but must be complementary. Our strategy for dealing with this breeding ground of terrorism will mean more security on the streets of Britain,” Brown told reporters travelling with him.
The new strategy is to be unveiled in a statement to parliament in London Wednesday.
Pakistan is expected to raise the issue of 11 Pakistani students who were arrested in Britain earlier this month as part of a probe into what Brown called a “major terrorist plot”. All were subsequently released without charge.
Foreign office spokesman Abdul Basit has said Pakistan would provide legal assistance to the students, who are facing deportation from Britain.
Brown said last year that 75 percent of extremist plots which Britain faces have links to Pakistan.
Commanders believe a major source of the threat in Afghanistan comes from Pakistan, where Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters are hunkered down in tribal areas and and where the northwest Malakand district has been put under sharia law.
An official travelling with Brown said Britain would redirect more of its aid to Pakistan and to the nuclear-armed country’s border regions.
It has allocated 665 million pounds (969 million dollars) for Pakistan between 2009 and 2013.
In Kabul, Karzai told the news conference with Brown that he would run for re-election, saying he would shortly register his candidacy for the August vote that had been pushed back from April over security fears.
“The election year will be a stern test for everyone, but we face a choice: confront extremism here and in Pakistan or let it come to us,” said Brown.
Britain is the second-biggest contributor of foreign troops to Afghanistan after the United States, deploying around 8,300 as part of a NATO-led force based mostly in the south, the heartland of a Taliban insurgency.
Britain and other NATO countries have pledged 5,000 extra troops for Afghanistan ahead of the country’s second presidential election, scheduled for August 20. The United States is rolling out an extra 21,000 troops.
There are around 70,000 NATO and US-led troops already fighting an increasingly deadly insurgency led by the Taliban, who were ousted by the US-led invasion in 2001 shortly after the September 11 attacks that year.
Brown visited British troops at Camp Bastion in the southern province of Helmand, and the provincial capital, Lashkar Gar, where he received a military briefing. He also attended talks with top local officials.
Britain was pledging around 15 million pounds (22 million dollars) to help with Afghan voter registration, part of a 2009-2013 development budget of 510 million pounds (746 million dollars), said an official travelling with Brown.
A total of 152 British soldiers have died in Afghanistan since the US-led invasion in October 2001.
