British Prime Minister Gordon Brown arrived Thursday on a surprise visit to Afghanistan and was expected to meet Afghan President Hamid Karzai, an Afghan Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman said, dpa reported..
During his one-day visit, Brown was scheduled to hold a joint press conference with Karzai Thursday in Karzai's fortified presidential palace, spokesman Sultan Ahmad Baheen said at a press conference.
Brown's visit to the war-torn country came a day after French President Nicolas Sarkozy came to Kabul after an attack on French soldiers killed 10 and wounded 21.
Britain is the second-largest contributor of foreign troops to Afghanistan after the United States. It has around 8,000 soldiers working mostly under the NATO banner.
British forces are stationed mostly in volatile southern Helmand province, which is the main hotbed for Taliban insurgency.