Cameron visits Afghanistan

Conservative leader David Cameron has flown to Afghanistan on a surprise visit to British troops in the country.

The Tory leader flew into the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar on a Ministry of Defence jet, accompanied by Shadow Defence Secretary Liam Fox and Brigadier Ed Butler, who commands Britain's 5,000-strong contribution to the International Security Assistance Force, led by NATO.

Mr Cameron, who is making his first visit to troops stationed overseas since becoming Conservative leader, said that his trip would be devoted to "listening, learning and showing our support for what is being done."

Mr Cameron said: "The purpose of this visit is extremely straightforward and simple. It is to show support for what our troops are doing Afghanistan and show that there is cross-party consensus for the very difficult and important work that they are doing.

"The second purpose is to see for myself the challenges, the difficulties and the opportunities and to learn what we are doing and how well it is working.

"We ask our troops and aircrews to do incredibly difficult and dangerous work on our behalf and I believe it is only right to see at first hand what they are being asked to deal with."

During his visit, Mr Cameron is expected to meet military commanders, soldiers and air crew from the RAF squadrons operating Harrier jets, Chinook helicopters and Hercules transport planes.

Brig Butler said: "We fully expected the Taliban to have a resurgence of the violence which we are seeing. I sense that we are at the tip of that spike of enemy activity. They are certainly very persistent and ferocious in their attacks, but I also think that it will only be a matter of weeks, maybe months before these levels of attacks will start to tail off."

(KMcA/SP)