Britain Calls for Greater Un Involvement in Afghanistan

Britain wants the UN to take the lead role in a "strategic plan" for Afghanistan amid growing concern about the impact of Nato and US military operations and the failure to get aid to those who need it.

A call for the UN to coordinate the many largely ineffective development projects designed to improve life for Afghans was made by Des Browne, the defense secretary, in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on Thursday. "There is a genuine hunger for leadership among the military, among aid communities, and among the NGOs," he said.

In an unusually pointed statement after a meeting with Robert Gates, his US counterpart, Mr Browne said he had stressed "just how important it is for Nato and its members to maximise our efforts in keeping the consent of the civilian population there in order to achieve our aims".

"We also need to heed President [Hamid] Karzai's words and take the greatest possible care to protect civilians during military operations to defeat the Taliban."

After US aircraft bombed an area in south-west Afghanistan near Herat, killing 50 civilians, this month, President Karzai warned that the Afghan people could no longer tolerate such casualties. Nato and US forces have killed an estimated 100 civilians over the past six weeks.

The British government's pressure on the UN to adopt a much higher profile and leadership role in Afghanistan is partly designed to deflect attention away from military operations in the country.

It comes as a leading Oxfam official in Kabul warns in the Guardian today of the danger of repeating in Afghanistan the mistakes made in Iraq. Millions of Afghans have seen little material improvement in their lives since 2001, and most still live in desperate poverty, he writes.

Separately, the Guardian has learned that, to the fury of civilian organizations, US forces are using an aid agency's property as a place to interrogate Afghans.