Clegg 'could end Afghan support'

Mr Clegg said he would not "condemn" UK forces to failure

The Liberal Democrats could stop supporting the UK's military presence in Afghanistan unless strategy is changed, leader Nick Clegg said.

He told BBC One's Politics show he wanted the mission to succeed but the present course was "almost certainly condemned to failure"".

Mr Clegg also said his party's backing for the war was not "unconditional".

The comments come after Prime Minister Gordon Brown pledged to send another 500 troops to Afghanistan.

There are currently about 9,000 UK military personnel in the country, while some 221 have been killed there since 2001.

'Heads held high'

The US government is debating a request for 40,000 more troops in Afghanistan.

Mr Clegg said: "Clearly no support that any political party gives for a conflict, for a war, is unconditional."

He also said: "The present strategy is failing so it needs to be changed and the discussions which are taking place in Washington at the moment are immensely important in working out whether we have got a strategy which will succeed.

"If that strategy, if that new strategy is, in our judgement, the wrong strategy, which will condemn our soldiers to failure, then of course we will revisit our support, of course."

He told Politics Show: "I think if we carry on, on the present course, we are almost certainly condemned to failure. I want us to succeed in Afghanistan."

"I want - when our servicemen and servicewoman leave Afghanistan - I want them to leave with their heads held high, feeling they've done a good job, a successful job, done what we're asking them to do not with a tail between their legs."

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