Short announces increase in aid for Afghanistan

The Government is to spend an extra £15 to help deliver aid to Afghanistan before winter sets in.

Clare Short, the International Development Secretary, said: We are racing against time to truck massive quantities of food and other emergency supplies into the country before the snows make large-scale trucking hazardous."

Speaking at a Ministry of Defence briefing she again stressed that the military action was aimed against terrorism and not against Islam.

She added that the government needed to "double" the amount of aid getting into the country.

"We've got to double the scale

"The priority now is to step up the level of trucking and yesterday I agreed with Catherine Bertini that the UK stands ready to help her remove any obstacles that stand in the way of this objective."