David Miliband applauded yesterday the deployment of 17,000 extra US troops to Afghanistan but said that Britain had no plans to increase its military presence in the country.

“I think there is a recognition that these extra American troops can and will play an important and positive role,” the Foreign Secretary said in the Afghan capital after a visit to British Forces in the south.

Britain has almost 9,000 troops in Afghanistan This month Mr Miliband announced the deployment of a further 300 soldiers, mostly specialists to counter Taleban roadside bomb attacks, amid reports that the US Government was pressing Britain for an additional 1,500 troops.

“We represent about 12 per cent of the troops in Afghanistan,” the Foreign Secretary said. “At the moment we have had no request to increase the number of our troops. We always keep the number under review.”

Britain is the second-biggest contributor to the Nato effort in Afghanistan. Last week Mr Miliband said that he believed British and other Nato forces were now stuck in a “strategic stalemate” with Taleban insurgents in some parts of the country.

The Foreign Secretary defended the British commitment in Afghanistan: “This commitment is very costly to Britain in terms of money and, more importantly, in human lives.” Since 2001, 145 British soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan, the overwhelming majority in Helmand since British troops were deployed there in 2006.

The latest, Lance-Corporal Stephen Kingscott, 22, from the 1st Battalion, The Rifles, was killed on Monday during a patrol close to Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital. He was the eighth British serviceman to die in Helmand since the start of the year.

The additional US troops represent a little more than half the 30,000 extra US troops requested by the Nato commander in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan, although many senior military officers in the country believe that Washington will announce further deployments in the coming weeks. The additional forces bring to 85,000 the number of foreign troops in Afghanistan from about 40 different countires.

A new report from the congressionally funded United States Institute of Peace said that “it is unlikely the United States and Nato will defeat the Taleban and other insurgent groups” and that Western governments must focus their energies on building Afghanistan’s own security forces.

While stating that “all is not lost in Afghanistan” the report’s authors said that the US and its allies must “re- examine their core objectives”, lower their ambitions for establishing a strong central government and consider the empowerment of tribes and other local organisations.

Nato commanders are likely to press European nations for a third of an additional 10,000 troops to be deployed in the run-up to presidential elections due in August.

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• Times Christmas appeal: Letter from the Editor
• Conferences — what a waste of money
• Schools supremo learns a painful lesson