KABUL, Dec 13: Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Saturday paid a surprise visit to Afghanistan, where he spoke to troops battling the Taliban and held talks with President Hamid Karzai.

The visit came as government and military sources speaking on condition of anonymity said that around 300 British soldiers had been deployed from Cyprus as part of an increase in troop levels ahead of next year’s presidential election.

Brown condemned Friday’s ‘terrible’ killing of British soldiers in Afghanistan, and said that other nations must also send more troops in support of the plan.

He said the world could not rely only on the two biggest contributors, Britain and the United States, whose president-elect Barack Obama has said he would send more troops to Afghanistan.

Britain’s military is feeling the pinch as it fights on two major fronts — in Afghanistan, where it has more than 8,000 troops as part of the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force, and Iraq.

While 41 countries have troops in Afghanistan, some European Nato members do not allow their forces to operate in the south and east where almost all the fighting takes place and bar them from offensive operations.

“In future, there must be proper burden sharing and that’s something which we will insist upon,” Brown said at a Kabul press conference with Karzai.

Britain is providing $10 million to help with the registration of voters now under way ahead of Afghan presidential polls due to take place next September, Brown announced.

London has also offered to set up a multi-agency task force, Brown said, to help the Afghan government fight corruption that analysts agree is endemic within ministries and the judicial system and is a big factor boosting support for the Taliban.

Brown said British troops were combating a ‘chain of terror’ coming from the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan “and could end up in the cities and towns of Britain”.

He called on Pakistan and Afghanistan to work together to ensure cross-border stability in the mountainous area seen as a militants’ hideout between the two nations.

“Joint action between Pakistan and Afghanistan... is essential if we’re going to have peace and stability,” he said.

Brown started his visit to Afghanistan in Camp Bastion, the huge British military base in Helmand province, where he spoke out against two fatal incidents that took place on Friday.

“It is a terrible commentary on the Taliban that they should use a 13-year-old child as a suicide bomber,” he said, referring to one attack which killed three and involved a teenager with a bomb hidden in a wheelbarrow.

He later took a helicopter to the Roshan observation post near Musa Qala, near where the troops died and a stone’s throw from where Taliban fighting has been taking place, and met Gurkha soldiers serving there.

Officials said the trip took him right up to the front line, with one claiming he got closer to fighting than any British premier since World War II leader Winston Churchill.

Brown also met acting district governor Said Agha and the local chief of police before returning to Camp Bastion for a meeting with Helmand governor Gulab Mangal covering next year’s elections, counter-narcotics and security.

A total of 132 British personnel have died in Afghanistan since the start of operations in 2001.—AFP