TROOP SHIFTING PLAN DROPPED

A US proposal for British troops to withdraw from Helmand province in southern Afghanistan into neighbouring Kandahar has been scrapped. The majority of Britain’s 10,000 troops in Afghanistan are deployed in Helmand but are now dwarfed by a 20,000-strong American force sent as reinforcements in the recent US surge. According to the Times newspaper, the US had wanted Britain to move its troops to Kandahar to allow US Marines to take over sole control of Helmand. As an inducement, Britain was said to have been guaranteed the top command post in Kandahar, which would ensure that a British general would still have had influence over key tactical decisions in the region. But General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander of American and Nato forces in Afghanistan, has confirmed that British troops were not being transferred.