Tony Blair pledged Britain's continuing support for war-torn Afghanistan until after the Taleban is defeated during a press conference in Kabul today with President Karzai.
The Prime Minister flew into Afghanistan this morning amid tight security in a show of support for the UK force which has seen some of the heaviest fighting by British troops since the Second World War.
His visit, in which he earlier met British troops at Camp Bastion this morning, makes him the first Western leader to meet Mr Karzai in Kabul.
During the joint press conference, Mr Blair stressed the importance of international support to stabilise and rebuild the country following the ousting of the Taleban five years ago.
"We believe that Afghanistan rather than being abused as a haven for terrorists and for the Taleban to oppress people, that Afghanistan and its people deserve the chance to increase their prosperity and to live in a proper democratic state.
"We will be with you in this endeavour. Our commitment remains that whatever challenges, whether of security or reconstruction or development, we are up to meeting those challenges with you."
Mr Blair used the press conference, ahead of a Nato summit in the Latvian capital Riga later this month, to urge that "now is the time to bring into sharp focus the need to stay with Afghans as they make their journey to progress."
Nato’s International Security Assistance Force has about 31,000 troops in Afghanistan including around 5,500 Britons.
British troops in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan have suffered the brunt of the heavy fighting and casualty rates are now higher than those in Iraq, with 36 killed since the beginning of this year.
A total of 41 British soldiers have been killed while serving in Afghanistan, of those 20 have been killed in action and 21 as a result of illness, non-combat injuries or accidents.
Asked whether the West had lost focus on Afghanistan, Mr Blair accepted that recent Taleban resistance had been stronger than expected over the summer but that it was important to show the progress that had been made.
"I think certainly from our perspective it’s important that we show the progress that’s being made to reenergise people, that it’s something that’s worth doing," he said.
Mr Blair said called the problem of opium farming in Afghanistan a "big, big challenge". Mr Karzai acknowledged that harvests of the drug in some parts of the country had increased, but said that it was "naïve" to think it can be wiped out overnight.
Mr Blair arrived in the country at Camp Bastion, the main UK base in the southern province of Helmand in a RAF Hercules transport aircraft.
It is Mr Blair’s second visit to the country. On the previous occasion in 2002 - shortly after the fall of the Taleban government - he was restricted to the Bagram air base.
His trip comes just a day after the West was accused by Pakistan of pursuing a failing strategy in Afghanistan by concentrating solely on military tactics.
But the West’s strategy in Afghanistan was attacked by President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan yesterday, who and said that the task could not be achieved by military action alone.
He added that only Pakistan was implementing the right strategy. He called on the West to implement a plan of billions of dollars of aid to rebuild Afghanistan, just as the US spent billions of dollars rebuilding Europe after the Second World War.
Mr Blair flew to Pakistan on a mission to step up the battle against terrorism and gave warning that that it was a global battle that would take a generation to win.
In talks with General Musharraf , Mr Blair offered £480 million to combat the preaching of hatred in Pakistani religious schools and the two leaders agreed further co-operation against Taleban militants in Afghanistan.
But Mr Musharraf said that the war "cannot be won through military action alone, you have to come up with a broader strategy. This strategy must involve a political element and reconstruction or development."
Reacting angrily to accusations that he was not doing enough to stop the Taleban crossing the border to safe havens in Pakistan’s largely lawless northwest provinces, Mr Musharraf turned the tables on Britain and America by declaring:
"We are the only one who are trying to implement the whole strategy, which means military, political, and also reconstruction. More action is required on the Afghanistan side, because the war will be won on the Afghan side, because the Taleban problem is on the Afghan side."
He added: "I have indicated to the Prime Minister also that we believe there is a requirement for a massive inflow of developmental funds there, some kind of a Marshall Plan, some billions of dollars."
Mr Blair agreed that reconstruction had to go hand in hand with the military action, but said that despite suffering enormous casualties at the hands of British troops, the Taleban would still try to take back control of some parts of the country. "The Taleban will try to get a foothold back, they will, that is what we expect, but our will has got to be superior to theirs," he said.
He insisted the strategy was right, declaring that in the War on Terror, "we begin to win when we start fighting properly, and I think we are now fighting properly, but we have got to do more".
But in a gloomy prognosis, he said that the global battle against terrorism "took a generation to grow and will take a generation to defeat".
His spokesman said that the amount of aid was not the problem in Afghanistan, but that the fighting made it difficult to carry out reconstruction.
Britain alone had given £500 million while $10.5 billion was pledged at the International Donors Conference in London in January "The problem is not the lack of financial aid available. The problem is getting the physical infrastructure and government infrastructure in place to spend that money," Mr Blair said. He added that in Helmand province, Britain had built 13 health clinics, 89 reservoirs, 423 wells and eight classrooms.
Mr Blair also visited the Saudi-financed Faisal mosque in Islamabad to talk to moderate Islamic leaders about ways to combat the growth of religious extremism and to stop it being exported to Britain.
