Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown, centre, meets British soldiers at Camp Bastion in Lashkar Gah in Afghanistan on Aug. 29. (Stefan Rousseau/Associated Press) British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told Britons Friday that the country's military will stay in Afghanistan until it can look after its own security.
"We cannot walk away," Brown said in a speech in London.
"People ask what success in Afghanistan would look like…. The answer is that we will have succeeded when our troops are coming home because the Afghans are doing the job themselves."
The renewal of Britain's commitment to Afghanistan comes as other NATO allies like Canada have held firm to pulling out of the strife-torn country.
Canada agreed last year to extend its military mission in Afghanistan to 2011 from the previous 2009 pull-out date. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has maintained that there will be no further extensions.
Meanwhile, Spain's Defence Minister Carme Chacon said Friday the country will consider sending more troops to Afghanistan, a decision likely to be welcomed by U.S. President Barack Obama's administration.
Chacon made the announcement a day after Spanish soldiers killed 13 insurgents in western Afghanistan. Spain has about 1,200 troops stationed in Afghanistan.
About 450 of them were sent to provide security for last month's presidential elections and were supposed to return after the results are announced in mid-September.
Brown's speech followed the resignation Thursday of Ministry of Defence aide Eric Joyce over the government's management of the conflict. The resignation was particularly embarrassing because Joyce is a former army major and one of the few members of the governing Labour Party with significant military experience.
'Same threat'
Brown addressed both terrorism and casualties in his speech, rejecting the idea of a time limit on pulling British troops out of Afghanistan and noting that the mission was not just about protecting Britons, but about protecting the international community as well.
"We all face the same threat," he said.
His speech comes at a time when support for Britain's mission in Afghanistan is falling. Critics, including lawmakers on Britain's influential foreign affairs committee, have said the mission is too open-ended and its goals too vague.
The government also has been criticized for allegedly failing to provide enough support to soldiers in the field. In another uncomfortable moment for the government earlier this summer, outgoing British minister Mark Malloch-Brown said that forces in Afghanistan needed more helicopters.
That directly contradicted the prime minister, who insisted the military had all that it needed. Brown defended spending in his speech Friday, saying it has more than doubled per soldier since 2006.
With files from The Associated Press
