London: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is under fire from opposition Conservatives, the media and some generals who accuse him of putting British soldiers' lives at risk in Afghanistan by failing to give them enough helicopters or vehicles robust enough to survive roadside bombs.
He suffered a further blow when a parliamentary defence aide resigned on Thursday in protest at the government's strategy.
Britain has 9,000 troops battling Taliban insurgents, the second largest foreign contingent after the United States.
Polls suggest public opinion is increasingly against the conflict after some 50 British soldiers were killed there in the last four months.
Further heavy British casualties could damage Brown in a national election due by next June which the opposition Conservatives are on track to win.
"We are in Afghanistan as a result of a hard-headed assessment of the terrorist threat facing Britain," Brown said in a speech to the International Institute for Strategic Studies think-tank in London.
Afghanisation strategy
Brown said the mountain areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan were "the most serious concentration of terrorist planning in the world".
He frequently says that three quarters of terrorism plots in Britain have originated in the remote region.
Brown called for a speeding up of the "Afghanisation" of the campaign, saying the number of Afghan troops trained each month should double to 4,000.
Other NATO allies must take their share of responsibility, he said, without naming any countries.
"Forty-two countries are involved and all must ask themselves if they are doing enough ... All of us benefit from defeating terrorism and greater stability in this region and all members of our coalition must play our proper part," he said.
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Brown did not respond directly to a fierce attack on his Afghan strategy on Thursday by Eric Joyce, who resigned as a parliamentary aide to Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth.
Joyce, a member of Brown's Labour Party and a former army officer, called for a timetable for reducing British forces in Afghanistan, saying the British public would not swallow for much longer Brown's argument that the troops were needed in Afghanistan to stop terror attacks in Britain.
The Conservatives said Brown's speech was short on detail.
"If we are to speed up the training of the Afghan National Army, how exactly will this be done? Will it require more British troops?" Conservative defence spokesman Liam Fox said.
Brown said Britain may be able to reduce its troop numbers in Afghanistan as Afghan forces took more responsibility for security, but he gave no timetable.
In the meantime, he said he was holding talks with British army chiefs and the United States on what forces would be needed to "partner" Afghan personnel.
"We have a situation where the Netherlands, Canada and potentially Japan have indicated their wish to have dates by which time their active forces will not be in the country and we are trying to deal with that situation at the same time," he said, without indicating whether Britain could send more troops.
The government said on Thursday that two more British soldiers had died in Afghanistan, bringing the total to 212.
Brown argued the British government was giving its troops the resources they need in Afghanistan, saying British spending per soldier fighting there had more than doubled since 2006.
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