London - A future Conservative government in Britain would send more troops to Afghanistan as part of a strategy that would focus on "fighting, winning and coming home," party leader David Cameron said Thursday. In his closing speech to the party's annual conference in Manchester, its last gathering before next year's general election, Cameron promised to present a "credible strategy" for Afghanistan should the Conservatives win the election.
"Our method should be clear - send more soldiers to train more Afghans to deliver the security we need. Then we can bring our troops home," he said.
Amid widespread concern over the rising British death toll in Afghanistan, Cameron promised a "ruthless, relentless focus on fighting, winning and coming home."
A total of 220 British soldiers have died in Afghanistan since the conflict began.
Cameron and his party have built up a steady lead in opinion polls over the ruling Labour government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who has repeatedly resisted demands for a further increase in British troops above the current level of 9,000.
Cameron, who turns 43 Friday, hopes to end 13 years of Labour government by leading the Conservatives to victory at the next general election, which must be held before early June 2010.
In a wide-ranging address in which he sought to outline his vision for a more equal society and predicted that "tough measures" would be needed to cut the national debt and ensure economic recovery, Cameron touched only briefly on the Conservatives' fraught relations with the European Union (EU).
He said that while there were areas, such as climate change, in which Europe could work well together, there was also a need for the 27-member bloc to "return to democracy and accountability in politics."
Earlier, William Hague, the Conservatives foreign policy spokesman, underlined the party's opposition to the Lisbon Reform Treaty, which he said was "against the spirit of our age."
Hague said a Conservative-led government would pursue a "distinctive British foreign policy" vis-a-vis both the EU and the US which would be "geared to the promotion of the British national interest."
The Lisbon Treaty would result in "even greater centralization of power beyond the democratic control of the people," warned Hague, who would be foreign secretary in a Tory-led government.
"We seek a European Union that acts by agreement among nations, rather than by placing its own president or foreign minister above any nation," said Hague.
The British Conservatives have pledged to hold a referendum on the treaty if they come to power before the ratification process is completed in all member states.
After Ireland's endorsement of the treaty last week, only Poland and the Czech Republic still have to complete ratification.
Underlining his party's foreign policy emphasis on Afghanistan, Cameron announced that he had appointed Richard Dannatt, the retired former head of the British Army, as a key military adviser who could one day even be given a government post.
Dannatt, who caused a stir in 2006 by saying that British forces were "exacerbating security problems" in Iraq, has recently been at odds with the Labour government over equipment and troop levels in Afghanistan, which he believes should be increased.
"When the country is at war, when Whitehall is at war, we need people who understand war in Whitehall," Cameron said about the general.
He said that under a Conservative government there would be a new "war cabinet," consisting of a national security council, ministers and defence chiefs, "sitting from the first day of a Tory administration."
"We cannot spend another eight years taking ground only to give it back again. We need a strategy that is credible and do-able," said Cameron about the Afghan conflict.
