France has offered to send up to 1,000 troops to Afghanistan, Nato said last night. They will go to the east of the country, enabling 2,500 Canadian troops to stay in the south until 2011. It came as Gordon Brown urged Nato allies to do more. The PM said no country should stand on the sidelines in the fight against the Taliban. With British soldiers braced for a spring offensive, he urged those who cannot send troops to lend kit such as helicopters. At a summit of the 26 Nato countries in Romania he said: "Burden sharing is about sharing equipment and people stepping up to the plate."
Meanwhile, former Liberal leader Lord Ashdown, a UN special envoy, warned: "I'm not saying we have lost, but we're getting pretty close to it."