Gordon Brown Plays Down Pakistan 'snub'

Gordon Brown yesterday attempted to brush off an apparent snub by Pakistan as it protested against the arrest and planned deportation of 11 Pakistani students on terror charges in the UK.

Pakistan's president, Asif Ali Zardari, pulled out of the planned press conference with Brown, with prime minister Yusuf Raza Gilani taking his place. "It is entirely appropriate that he has a press conference with his counterpart," a No 10 spokesman said.

On a whistlestop tour of Afghanistan and Pakistan, Brown announced plans for a new strategy to tackle the "crucible of terrorism" on the border of the two countries. In a press conference in Islamabad, the British prime minister hailed a "new chapter" in relations between the UK and Pakistan.

But he faced appeals from the Pakistan government for the students, arrested a fortnight ago but later released without charge, to be allowed to stay in the UK. The Home Office refused to share any information about the arrests with Pakistan.

Gilani said at the joint press conference: "We had a concern. We have discussed that whatever information is shared with us we will examine it ... I think the law will take its own course and I would also request [of] the prime minister that their studies should not be discontinued."

On Brown's last visit to Pakistan, in December, he and Zardari did stage a joint press conference. Zardari and Brown instead met later yesterday.

Asif Durrani, the Pakistani deputy high commissioner in London, told the Guardian last week he regarded constant British briefing that Pakistan was a hotbed of terrorism to be "vindictive" and "slurs". But yesterday Brown repeated his assertion last made on his December visit that three-quarters of Islamic terror threats originate in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

A new doctrine, mirroring Barack Obama's "Afpak" strategy, will be unveiled by Brown in the Commons on Wednesday. The UK will send 900 extra troops, in addition to £15m of aid, to help the Afghans with their upcoming election. Brown will also redirect existing aid to Pakistan. Of the £655m package over four years, the UK's second largest aid budget, half will be directed to the troubled northern areas of Pakistan. The strategy also calls for the Afghan army to be expanded from 75,000 to 134,000 by the end of 2011.

Speaking in Afghanistan, Brown said: "There is a chain of terrorism that goes from here round to the streets of Britain. That's why it's absolutely important that, while we have made progress on Afghan elections, democratic government, 6 million children in education, hospitals as well as roads and infrastructure for the people of Afghanistan, that we defeat international terrorism and hold it back from here in Lashkar Gar, here in Helmand province, but also on the other side of the border in Pakistan."