PM faces more Afghanistan pressure (From Congleton Guardian)

PM faces more Afghanistan pressure

3:11am Tuesday 10th November 2009

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Gordon Brown is braced for more pressure over the bloody conflict in Afghanistan.

The Prime Minister is set to face questions from the media in Downing Street after being forced to apologise to the mother of a dead soldier for errors in a hand-written letter of condolence.

Mr Brown was said to have been "mortified" when told of Jacqui Janes's distress over the missive, immediately arranging a telephone call to say sorry.

She had accused Mr Brown of being "disrespectful" because the letter began "Dear Mrs James" and appeared to contain other spelling mistakes and a visible correction to her son Jamie's name.

The press conference also comes as the Ministry of Defence prepares to name another soldier who was killed in volatile Helmand province on Remembrance Sunday.

And the bodies of six British soldiers killed in Afghanistan, including five who died when an Afghan policeman turned his gun on them, are also due to return to Britain.

Warrant Officer Class 1 Darren Chant, 40, Sergeant Matthew Telford, 37, and Guardsman Jimmy Major, 18, from the Grenadier Guards, died alongside Corporal Steven Boote, 22, and Corporal Nicholas Webster-Smith, 24, from the Royal Military Police.

They were shot dead by a "rogue" Afghan police officer at a secure checkpoint in Nad-e-Ali in Helmand Province on November 3 in an attack claimed by the Taliban.

Two days later, Serjeant Phillip Scott, 30, of 3rd Battalion The Rifles, was killed by an improvised explosive device near Sangin in Helmand.

The soldiers' bodies will be flown into RAF Lyneham in Wiltshire.

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