Helicopters not biggest Afghan problem: UK's Brown

CARDIFF (Reuters) - Equipping British forces in Afghanistan with surveillance and anti-mine capabilities is a more pressing problem than supplying more helicopters, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Thursday.

Brown has been dogged by accusations that a shortage of helicopters in Afghanistan is endangering British soldiers because they are forced to use roads where they regularly become targets for bombs set by Taliban insurgents.

A Briton died in an explosion in Afghanistan Wednesday, bringing to 188 the number of British soldiers killed there since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.

Brown took his entire cabinet to the Welsh capital for a meeting Thursday but could not escape questions about the Afghanistan conflict.

The wife of a soldier serving in Afghanistan asked him about a lack of helicopters and quoted soldiers there as saying they needed equipment to counter roadside bombs.

Brown said British forces had to clear mines, roadside bombs and electronic devices planted by the Taliban.

"The biggest problem is not the one that people are talking about on the airwaves," Brown said, referring to helicopters.

The biggest problem was providing British troops with surveillance, engineering and anti-mine capabilities to reduce the danger from electronic devices, he told a question-and-answer session with young people hosted by a Welsh radio station.

Britain had sent in more engineers and better equipment to tackle roadside bombs. It would also send better armored vehicles to Afghanistan later in the year, he said.

A sharp rise in the British military death toll, stemming from a major British and American offensive in southern Afghanistan, has alarmed the public and led to questioning of the British mission there.

Brown was embarrassed Wednesday when the Foreign Office minister responsible for Afghanistan, Mark Malloch-Brown, echoed criticisms from some military chiefs by saying British forces did not have enough helicopters. He later retracted the comment.

"We are up against a Taliban that cannot beat us when you fight face-to-face so they are using the most insidious of techniques to destroy lives by using roadside devices," Brown said Thursday.

"We and the Americans and others are responding to that."

He said soldiers involved in the operation in Helmand province, dubbed Panther's Claw, had made "far more progress than people thought they would."

"I hope we will be able to say that this operation has been successful very soon," he said.

Britain has temporarily raised the number of troops in Afghanistan to about 9,150 from 8,100 as part of a drive to improve security before an August 20 presidential election.

(Reporting by Adrian Croft; Editing by Richard Balmforth)