U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband arrived in Afghanistan on a surprise visit after meeting in London on Wednesday to discuss NATO's future strategy in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan, where the Taliban regime was overthrown in a 2001 U.S.-led campaign, has seen a rise in violence in the last two years. The country is also the world's leader in the illegal opium trade, with almost all its arable lands sown with poppies.
"The arrival of the U.S. secretary of state and the British foreign secretary in Afghanistan, who will meet with President Hamid Karzai, demonstrates that both allies support the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan," Afghan Foreign Ministry Spokesman Sultan Ahmad Baheen said.
The United States and Britain have joined efforts to urge other NATO members to share more of the combat burden in Afghanistan, where the alliance deploys a 42,000-strong International Security Assistance Force.
As of December 2007, the U.S. has contributed over 15,000 troops to the mission with an extra 3,200 marines to be sent to Afghanistan this spring, including 2,200 soldiers to help the NATO-led force in the south.
Among the rest of the 39 contributing countries, Britain has deployed about 7,700 troops, Germany - 3,155, Italy - 2,358, Canada - 1,730, the Netherlands - 1,512, and France - 1,292, according to official data.
At a joint news conference in London, Rice said alliance members needed to "come together to give enough military power to do what needs to be done on the front end of the counter-insurgency effort".
She said that the Taliban movement had been considerably weakened and was not able to conduct large-scale terrorist acts and military operations against the allied and government troops, but that the end of the war in Afghanistan was still far ahead.
"Our populations need to understand this is not a peacekeeping mission," but rather a long-term fight against extremists, Rice said.
The Taliban launched more than 140 suicide missions last year. More than 6,000 people died in fighting in 2007, nearly 2,000 of them civilians, according to official sources.
