Published Date: 14 December 2009
A £150 million package to tackle the threat of roadside bombs in Afghanistan is set to be announced today – after the Prime Minister bedded down in forces accommodation in the country at the weekend.
£150m package for tackling roadside bombs after Brown spends night alongside Kandahar troops
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Published Date: 14 December 2009
A £150 million package to tackle the threat of roadside bombs in Afghanistan is set to be announced today – after the Prime Minister bedded down in forces accommodation in the country at the weekend.

• Prime Minister Gordon Brown meets British troops from 1 Royal Welsh at the Kandahar airbase in Afghanistan

Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth is due to announce the three-year spending programme, which will include establishing new training facilities in the UK and an intelligence centre in Afghanistan. The money will come from a “reprioritisation” of existing Ministry of Defence spending.

The government will also announce that a further £10 million will be drawn under “urgent operational requirements” to buy 400 state-of-the-art mine detectors.

Gordon Brown spent Saturday night in a prefabricated, corrugated shed, surrounded by concrete blast walls at Kandahar airfield, the coalition HQ for the region.

At the end of a week in which the number of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan this year reached 100, Mr Brown said: “I wanted to be here with the troops to thank them for what they are doing. I wanted to see what it was like working with them.”

His stay – at the start of an unannounced pre-Christmas visit to meet the troops – was the first time a British premier had overnighted in either Afghanistan or Iraq. Aides said Mr Brown may have been the first Prime Minister to have spent the night in a war zone since Winston Churchill in the Second World War. Previously, Mr Brown – like Tony Blair before him – would fly in and out of Afghanistan in a single day, often staying in nearby countries. Although Mr Brown was given his own room, he had to share washroom facilities. Outside, there was a concrete shelter where he could take cover in the event of a rocket attack on the camp – currently running at one or two a week.

Following talks with President Hamid Karzai, who came to Kandahar to meet him, the Prime Minister said the coming months would be “critical” in the fight against the Taleban and called on the public at home to rally behind the troops. “I know this has been a difficult year,” he said. “I think the next few months are obviously critical. We need to show there is support for our forces back in Britain, which I know there is, and a determination to take on the Taleban.”

Both men denied there was any rift between them, despite recent criticism by western leaders – including Mr Brown – of Mr Karzai’s failure to tackle corruption after his controversial re-election.

Mr Brown emphasised the efforts being made to counter the threat from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) – the deadly roadside bombs which account for most of the casualties. “We have ramped up our counter-IED efforts to give the best protection possible to our troops on the ground,” he said.

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