Afghan regime will fall in 'weeks' if Nato quits now

In an interview with the Guardian at the end of a visit to Kabul for the presidential inauguration of Hamid Karzai, the foreign secretary said: "If international forces leave, you can choose a time five minutes, 24 hours or seven days but the insurgent forces will overrun those forces that are prepared to put up resistance and we would be back to square one."

At the end of a day spent visiting British troops and officials at the headquarters of the international military effort, Miliband said that Afghans were "sad that they need anyone, but they are passionate that my goodness they do because if we weren't here their country would be rolled over".

He agreed that public anxiety about the war is growing in Britain as a result of rising casualties.

"Afghanistan wasn't on the front pages until the last six months for obvious reasons," he said. "Now for tragic reasons there is a lot of interest. What we have to do is explain to people that the costs of staying are real but they are less than the costs of leaving."

Call for unity

He called for the three main party leaders to remain united in support of the war, despite growing unease, in particular from Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader. "Nick Clegg and David Cameron ask serious questions about different aspects of the campaign. They can do that, and they should be asked," Miliband said. But he challenged opponents of the war to show that retreat would not harm both Afghanistan and Britain.

"I don't think British opinion is about to flip to a position that says withdraw now," he said. "But there is a high degree of concern about the casualties, understandably, there is a high degree of concern about the complexity of effecting a strategy in a country with history as complex as this, and there is a high degree of concern about all the partners that we have got.

"There is a natural reaction to 18, 19, 20-year-olds, your neighbours, relatives and your friends being killed. It makes you ask, why are we there, can you succeed, is it worth it?"

— Guardian News & Media Limited

Germany deployment not needed

British troops could be withdrawn from Germany by a future Tory government if other Nato states agreed to take over the UK's commitments there, the shadow defence secretary, Liam Fox, has said.

Fox said it is "no longer necessary" to keep 20,000 military personnel in Germany, nearly 70 years after the end of the Second World War. Ending the deployment would free up forces to carry out vital Nato operations outside Europe, he said.

The number of soldiers in Germany has been scaled down over the years and their presence is now centred on Herford, near Hanover, where the 1st Armoured Division is based.

— Guardian News & Media Limited