Rice in Pakistan to seek unity against Taliban

KABUL, June 27 (Reuters) US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice today began a mission to urge Pakistan and Afghanistan to cooperate in fighting resurgent Taliban forces and two British soldiers were killed in fighting in the region.

Violence this year in Afghanistan is the worst since the Taliban militia was ousted in 2001 for refusing to give up Osama bin Laden. More than 1,100 people, including nearly 50 foreign troops, have been killed.

Rice arrived in Islamabad on Tuesday to try to make Pakistan and Afghanistan stop bickering and work together to fight the Taliban, nearly five years after the hardline Islamists were forced from power.

Afghanistan says the Taliban are so potent because they can operate from sanctuaries on the Pakistani side of the lawless border. Relations between the neighbours have soured over the accusations.

Rice will travel to Afghanistan on Wednesday where she will reinforce support for President Hamid Karzai who faces growing frustration over slow economic progress as he struggles to stem the insurgency.

In other violence on Tuesday, a suicide car-bomber attacked a German NATO peacekeeping patrol in the generally peaceful north but none of the troops was hurt, a spokesman said. The bomber and two passers-by were killed, an Afghan official said.

NATO FORCE The NATO force, which operates in Kabul, the west and the north, is due to take over security in the south from U.S.

forces next month.

The British soldiers were killed when their patrol came under attack in Sangin valley of Helmand province in southern Afghanistan.

''A UK patrol came under attack ... two British soldiers were killed and one was seriously injured,'' said British military spokesman Captain Drew Gibson.

The deaths are the second and third British military fatalities since British forces were deployed to the volatile area of Helmand in recent months.

The British patrol received help from aircraft and a quick reaction force and fighting went on for about two hours, Gibson said. A British military vehicle was later destroyed by a rocket-propelled grenade but no one was hurt, he said.

A spokesman for the Taliban said their fighters had launched the attack and killed a large number of foreign and Afghan troops, as well as destroying three trucks carrying supplies for foreign forces.

Helmand police chief Nabi Mullahkhail said 13 Taliban had been killed in the fighting.

In Helmand, Britain has about 3,300 troops who will soon be brought under the NATO peacekeeping mission.

For now they remain under command of US forces who this month launched an operation to flush Taliban guerrillas out of the hills, billed as the biggest Western offensive since 2002.

In the northern Kunduz province, a suicide bomber attacked the German patrol, killing himself and two passers-by, an Afghan security official said. The Taliban claimed responsibility.

Reuters SK VP0338