LONDON, Feb 9: Britain appointed its own Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan and named Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, currently its Ambassador to Afghanistan, for the post on the day US President Obama’s Special Representative for the two countries arrived in Islamabad.

Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles will be returning to the Foreign Office in London in March to take up his new appointment.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband said: “Sherard Cowper-Coles has made a major contribution to the UK effort in Afghanistan during his time as Ambassador in Kabul. I want to continue to make use of his expertise as we take forward our work with both countries which is so critical to the UK’s own strategic interests.”

Before he was appointed ambassador to Afghanistan he is said to have warned that the UK presence in the terror-ridden country was a marathon that could last three decades, not a short sprint.

He has a reputation for shrewd and undiplomatic plain speaking – with a dash of self-advertisement.

According to his profile, Sir Sherard, 52, has been making waves since he joined the Foreign Office in 1977 with an Oxford double first in classics. He studied Arabic at the “school for spies” at Shemlan in Lebanon, using what his friend and ex-ambassador Chris Wilton calls “a brain the size of a small planet”, before being sent to Cairo.

“Sherard is more than just a diplomat,” Rosemary Hollis of the Royal Institute of International Affairs is quoted as having said. “He’s a man with a voice and views. Mealy-mouthed he is not.” Another former colleague observes: “Sherard is talented, clever and successful, so he does attract acid comment.”

Flurries of attention and controversy have accompanied Cowper-Coles in every job he has done. An indiscreet briefing on Northern Ireland when he was at the Washington embassy had unionists baying for his blood. In the early 1990s, he clashed with Chris Patten, the governor of Hong Kong, over moves to democratise the colony before the handover to China. He came close to the heart of power as Robin Cook’s private secretary during the Kosovo crisis, helping his prickly and gaffe-prone boss manage a difficult relationship with the mandarins.

It was a sign of change that he became the first Arabist to be posted as ambassador to Tel Aviv in 2001 as the second Palestinian intifada raged in the West Bank and Gaza.

Next stop, with some raised eyebrows in the Arab world, was Saudi Arabia, a strategic linchpin of British policy in the region, where oil and other delicate matters such as the massive al-Yamamah arms deal had to be carefully managed. It was there that Cowper-Coles famously recommended that the Serious Fraud Office end its criminal investigation into alleged bribery by the British arms firm BAE or see grave damage to British interests — a position he still insists was justified.

In October last year The Times’ reported he had warned his foreign office that the campaign against the Taliban insurgents would fail and that the best hope was to install an acceptable dictator in Kabul.

Quoting leaks from French foreign office, the Times said the ambassador had delivered his bleak assessment of the seven-year Nato campaign in Afghanistan.

However, sources in Whitehall said the account was a parody of the British Ambassador’s remarks.

The Times report said François Fitou, the deputy French Ambassador to Kabul, told President Sarkozy’s office and the Foreign Ministry in a coded cable that Sir Sherard had told him on September 2 that the Nato-led military operation was making things worse. “The foreign forces are ensuring the survival of a regime which would collapse without them . . . They are slowing down and complicating an eventual exit from the crisis, which will probably be dramatic,” the ambassador was quoted as saying.

Britain had no alternative to supporting the United States in Afghanistan, “but we should tell them that we want to be part of a winning strategy, not a losing one”, he was quoted as saying. “In the short term we should dissuade the American presidential candidates from getting more bogged down in Afghanistan . . . The American strategy is doomed to fail.”