British MPs want UK to focus on single priority of security in Afghanistan

London, Aug 2 (ANI): A committee of British MPs has said that the country should focus on the single priority of security in Afghanistan instead of engaging in tasks such as counter-narcotics, human rights and state building.

The report by the cross-party House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said the UK had suffered "significant mission creep" since deploying to Afghanistan in 2001.

An ever-growing list of responsibilities had made it more difficult for the government to explain the purpose of the UK's mission, the BBC quoted the report, as saying.

The report was critical of some of the UK's Nato allies for failing to pull their weight in Afghanistan.

It warned that the international community had delivered much less than it promised over the past eight years. Nato's reputation as a military alliance risked being "seriously damaged" as a result.

British deployment of a military force to the lawless southern province of Helmand in 2006 was "undermined by unrealistic planning at senior levels, poor co-ordination between Whitehall departments and crucially a failure to provide the military with clear direction," it said.

The report warned that the security situation, particularly in the south, could be expected to remain precarious for some time to come.

It suggested the continued instability was due in part to the failures of the international community, the BBC reports.

The report said: "We welcome the government's recognition that its strategy must be grounded in realistic objectives. However, it is not easy to see how this can be reconciled with the open-ended and wide-ranging series of objectives which form the current basis for UK effort in Afghanistan." (ANI)