British troops will stay in Bagram says MoD

A spokesman for the British Ministry of Defence said British troops who flew into Bagram in Afghanistan earlier in the week will…

A spokesman for the British Ministry of Defence said British troops who flew into Bagram in Afghanistan earlier in the week will stay.

The spokesman denied a reported rift with the opposition Northern Alliance.

"We can confirm that we have not had any such approach from the Northern Alliance leadership and none of our troops will be returning home from Bagram air base," the spokesman said.

"We have spoken to our people in Kabul and they say there have been no difficulties with their presence at the air base," he added, denying reports that the Northern Alliance wanted most of the British troops to leave the base.

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Earlier a senior official of the Northern Alliance said only a small number of British troops would be allowed to stay for humanitarian tasks.

"There are 85 of them who have come without any prior coordination in the name of humanitarian aid led by the United Nations", Mr Engineer Arif, deputy chief of intelligence for the Northern Alliance, said.

"Our decision is that 15 of them can stay and the others go", he said after a meeting of Alliance leaders.

Some 100 British special forces landed at Bagram airbase early yesterday and swiftly began to secure the airport in what officials in Britain said was an operation to provide security for humanitarian operations in war-ravaged Afghanistan.

The Northern Alliance took control of Kabul on Tuesday after the Taliban, pounded by more than five weeks of US bombing, withdrew from the capital and fell back to their southern stronghold of Kandahar.

AFP