Brown to talk strategy with leaders

Camp Bastion, Afghanistan: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown flew to Pakistan and Afghanistan opn Monday touting a new security strategy for the region as international alarm spreads over Taliban advances.

"It's important to recognise that if we do not take action and we do not fight back against the Taliban and Al Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan, then people in Britain and in other countries represented here are less safe," Brown told British and allied troops at a base in southern Afghanistan's Helmand province

After meeting Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul, Brown said he would next fly to Pakistan to hold talks with President Asif Ali Zardari.

Asked what Britain would do about instability on the Pakistani side of the border, Brown said: "It's clear ... that we cannot sit by and allow this centre, or epicentre, of terrorism to continue to exist without taking further action."

Although the Western forces are massing on the Afghan side of the border, attention in Western capitals is increasingly turning across the frontier to Pakistan, where Taliban influence has spread in recent weeks to valleys northwest of the capital.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Sunday that Washington was worried about the advancing Taliban seizing control of the Pakistani state, including "the keys to the nuclear arsenal of Pakistan".

Zardari told reporters yesterday that Pakistan's nuclear weapons were safe.

Officials travelling with Brown said the new strategy, to be published tomorrow, will focus on fighting militants on both sides of the border.