Britain is for a second time pushing the envelope to get an interim security force onto the ground in Afghanistan. Britain's Defence Ministry said that London will later this week hold an informal conference of potential contributors to an international stabilisation force for Afghanistan. The force would be drawn from a United Nations-mandated "coalition of the willing."
Yet no U.N. mandate yet exists for the force, and British officials acknowledge that it remains unclear whether the Afghans themselves will accept British, or any other non-Muslim troops on the streets of Kabul.

After Britain's Defence Ministry was burned last month, when it publicly readied some 6,000 troops for deployment in a stabilization force, only to be thwarted by resistance from the U.S. and local Afghans, a spokesman insisted that no decisions have yet been taken on deployment.
But the U.K. appears again to pushing hard. While U.N. spokesmen in New York and London said they were unaware of the conference, Simon Wren, a senior British Defense Ministry spokesman, said it was happening in an effort "to get ahead of the game." Other countries likely to take part include Germany, France, Italy and Turkey. Bureau Report