In unusually harsh terms reflecting international frustration with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Friday that the government in Kabul would forfeit its right to international support against the Taliban insurgency if it failed to root out corruption.
"Sadly, the government of Afghanistan had become a byword for corruption," Brown said in a speech to defense experts. "And I am not prepared to put the lives of British men and women in harm's way for a government that does not stand up against corruption."
His words were regarded by some analysts as the toughest by a Western leader since Karzai was declared the winner this week of Afghanistan's flawed elections.
The timing of Brown's warning was significant, with the Obama administration under domestic and international pressure to decide whether to commit as many as 40,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan at a time when international appetite for the conflict seems to be receding.
Brown was speaking four days after five British soldiers were killed by an Afghan policeman they were supposed to be mentoring in an attack that shook many Britons' support for the eight-year war. So far, 230 British soldiers have died since the ouster of the Taliban government in 2001. Seven of them died in the past seven days.
Brown echoed calls this week by senior White House officials for Karzai to establish an anticorruption commission to establish strict accountability for national and provincial officials.
In addition, some U.S. and European officials are pressing for at least a few arrests of what one administration official, speaking to reporters in Washington on Thursday, called "the more blatantly corrupt" people in the Afghan government. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the issue.
Administration officials declined to provide the names of people they wanted to see arrested and acknowledged that such arrests were a long shot.