PORT OF SPAIN: Britain aims to set clear goals in Afghanistan at top-level talks next year to help bring its troops home, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Saturday, amid public anger at the rising death toll.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, UN chief Ban Ki-moon and all major contributors to the coalition fighting in Afghanistan as well as regional neighbors will be invited to the London conference on January 28.

‘What we need is a political push to match the military push we’re now agreeing to,’ Brown told reporters on the sidelines of a Commonwealth summit in Trinidad.

Karzai has to realize ‘that there will be milestones by which he’s going to be judged and he’s got to accept that there will be benchmarks which the international community will set,’ he added.

He was speaking before President Barack Obama was to unveil a new strategy on Afghanistan on Tuesday, when he is expected to order the deployment of over 30,000 fresh US troops to the conflict.

But the president, who has vowed to ‘finish the job’ in Afghanistan, will also lay out an exit strategy, with some 68,000 US troops already on the ground fighting a strengthened Taliban insurgency now in its ninth year.

Karzai, re-elected to a second term after fraud-tainted elections, is coming under growing pressure to prove his government is a reliable partner as the conflict bogs down.

Ban, appearing with Brown, told reporters the foreign-minister level London conference was ‘a timely initiative to allow for a high-level dialogue in the post-electoral climate in Afghanistan.’ Brown hopes the talks will draw up clear benchmarks for future military and political strategy in Afghanistan for 2010 and beyond.

He plans to build up Afghan forces to 50,000, and committed Britain to training 5,000 alone in Helmand province by the end of 2010.

The British leader also called for 5,000 more troops from other countries outside of Britain and the United States to be deployed with Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

The aim is to gradually hand over responsibility for security to Afghan forces, district by district and province by province, enabling Britain to withdraw its 25,000 troops.

‘I want the conference in London to set the conditions needed for district by district handover to Afghan lead responsibility,’ Brown said.

He stressed that a timetable for withdrawing British forces from the increasingly unpopular war would only be drafted once the Afghan army and police show they can maintain security.

At least 483 foreign troops, about half of them Americans and some 98 Britons, have been killed in Afghanistan this year, according to the icasualties.org website, making it one of the deadliest years for troops since the US-led invasion in 2001.

England has witnessed emotional scenes, with thousands pouring out onto the streets to pay tribute when fallen troops arrive back home in coffins, and polls show the conflict is increasingly unpopular in both Britain and the United States.

The hope is that one or two districts in restive southern Helmand province could be transferred in 2010 to Afghan forces, and up to five Afghan provinces by the end of the year, Brown said.

‘Within three months, our benchmark is that the Afghan government should have identified additional troops to send to Helmand province for training,’ Brown said.

‘Within six months, we will want a clear plan for police training that means corruption is being dealt with and we have a police force that works with the local community rather than sometimes against it.’ He also called on Karzai to complete the appointments of 400 governors within nine months.— AFP