Cabinet unease over the rising death toll of British troops in Afghanistan is exposed today.

Peter Hain, the Welsh Secretary, becomes the first Cabinet minister openly to question the Government’s strategy. In an interview with The Times, he calls for greater clarity over the mission, saying: “We need to get a grip on it.”

Although he disagrees with the former Foreign Office minister Kim Howells that troops should be withdrawn, he says that the public will not tolerate a long campaign.

“My timetable is this: we can’t be there for ever and we can’t leave now,” he says. “When people starting putting 20 years on it, that is unacceptable. I’m not going to give a limit but we don’t want a long time frame.”

More than 230 British soldiers have died in Afghanistan since 2001. General Sir David Richards, the new head of the Army, caused controversy when he said in August that the “whole process” might take as much as 30 or 40 years. He said later that he had not meant to suggest that troops would be fighting for the whole of that time.

At Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting, questions were raised by several ministers during the first full discussion of the war for several months.

Andy Burnham, the Health Secretary, expressed concern that the public no longer supported the campaign and said that the Government had failed to communicate the purpose of British involvement. John Denham, the Communities Secretary who resigned in 2003 over the Iraq war, is also understood to be anxious about the scope of the mission.

Gordon Brown insisted yesterday that he had “taken responsibility” for making the case on the war as he called for other Nato countries to contribute extra troops.

President Obama promised a transparent decision on whether to send tens of thousands more US soldiers. “The decision will be made soon — it will be one that is fully transparent to the American people,” he said in Tokyo on a four-nation Asian tour.

It emerged this week that Karl Eikenberry, the US Ambassador to Kabul, had urged Mr Obama not to send the troops because of doubts over President Karzai. The decision is expected when Mr Obama returns home on Thursday.

Mr Hain echoes concerns expressed in The Times last week by Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon about the credibility of the Afghan Government after a rigged election, and warns that corruption risks undermining the military campaign. “You need a legitimate system of government, we don’t have that at moment and it has to be sorted,” he says. “The whole credibility of our attempt to create a democratic system of politics is under threat if there isn’t a principle of good government embedded.”

President Karzai, who will be inaugurated next week, must do more to prove to the Afghan people and the international community that he is committed to cleaning up his Administration, Mr Hain says. “It doesn’t work to make threats, but you have to be absolutely clear about the standards you expect in return for the support he is getting. It is a two-way bargain.”

Mr Hain, a former Foreign and Commonwealth Office minister who had responsibility for Afghanistan between 1999 and 2001, admits the Government needs to do more to win the voters over: “There’s a lot of uneasiness about what we’re doing. The public is horrified by the mounting death toll and worried about how long the war will last. I don’t think they think we should pull out but they do want a much clearer forward strategy that is capable of being successful.”

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