 There are 1,100 UK troops in Afghanistan already |
The UK is preparing to send reinforcements to Afghanistan to help with security. It was announced in June last year that the UK would send its HQ group from the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps in 2006.
But the Ministry of Defence has dismissed newspaper speculation the force will be 5,000-strong.
A spokesman said: "We are considering a range of options but no decision has been made on the scale, nature and location of any future UK deployment."
There are about 18,000 US-led foreign troops in Afghanistan tracking al-Qaeda and Taleban militants, with security patchy outside the capital Kabul.
Despite the Northern Alliance and US and UK-led victory against the Taleban, attacks by Islamist militants in much of the country and a rise in the opium trade have caused concern.
The ARRC HQ group will join the International Security Assistance Force, whose main job is security in Kabul and the surrounding area.
The ISAF has previously been led by the UK, Turkey, Germany, Canada and France. The UK currently has 1,100 troops in the force.
Shadow defence secretary Michael Ancram has written to Defence Secretary John Reid demanding he say how many soldiers will be sent to Afghanistan and an assurance that the deployment in Iraq will not be affected.
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