UK helicopters insufficient “clarified”

Foreign Office minister Lord Malloch Brown has clarified a comments he made in a Daily Telegraph interview that the UK did not have enough helicopters, the BBC has learnt.

He said there was "without doubt sufficient resources" for current operations in his "clarification statement” issued by the Foreign Office.

Mr Brown, who is leaving the government at the end of this week, said in the statement: "It is important that I clarify the comments that are reported in today's Daily Telegraph.

"On the issue of helicopters in Afghanistan, I was making the point - as the prime minister and commanders on the ground have also done - that while there are without doubt sufficient resources in place for current operations, we should always do what we can to make more available on the frontline." The BBC reports

Chancellor Alistair Darling has said the Treasury had never refused requests for more equipment or troops.

Mr Darling’s statement was the latest in a string of government statements insisting the Army has the necessary equipment for its role in the campaign, as part of a Nato-led coalition, said the BBC.

Previously, Lord Malloch Brown laid down an ‘astonishing’ challenge to the government that Britain need more helicopters in Afghanistan, according to his interview with the Daily Telegraph.

Andrew Porter and Mary Riddell from the Daily Telegraph wrote Mr Brown admitted the public were not warned sufficiently about Britain and the US going on the offensive in Helmand before the recent rise in casualties.

Meanwhile, he also questioned Gordon Brown’s insistence that the war was being fought to stop Afghan terrorists carrying out attacks on Britain, and he also said Gordon Brown’s future looked “bleak”, said the Daily Telegraph.

Lord Malloch Brown’s intervention in ‘the lack of helicopters row’ for British troops is particularly damaging for the Prime Minister, because his role as Foreign Office minister includes responsibility for Afghanistan.

According to the Daily Telegraph, Professor Michael Clarke, director of defence think tank the Royal United Services Institute, said Lord Malloch-Brown's comments were an 'astonishing' challenge to the Government to rethink its Afghanistan strategy.

In the BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Clarke said the helicopters row had assumed a “totemic” significance.

He said: “Everyone agrees it would be better if there were more lift helicopters ... in Afghanistan because they give you the flexibility to move people around.
"But on their own, helicopters are no silver bullet for winning wars."

He then went on to say it is astonishing to him that Malloch-Brown has said this before he steps down from the Government because Mr Brown seems to be throwing down a challenge, which is to say 'we have to rethink our strategic priorities over Afghanistan and what we are trying to achieve there'.

"That is something a number of people have said, but for a Government minister to say this at this time is very interesting."

The latest casualty in Afghanistan, according to the Daily Telegraph, was a bomb disposal expert had who had become the latest victim of the conflict with the Taliban, the 18th British soldier’s death since the start of the month.

It takes the death toll up to 186 from the start of operations in Afghanistan since 2001.