( dpa ) - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband arrived Thursday on a surprise visit to Afghanistan, the Afghan Foreign Affairs Ministry said.
Both diplomats arrived from London, where they participated in talks on how to get other NATO allies to send their troops to Afghanistan's restive southern region, where the Taliban insurgency is at its peak.
Rice and Miliband were expected to hold meetings with President Hamid Karzai and senior members of his Cabinet, ministry spokesman Sultan Ahmad Baheen.
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates recently called on NATO allies to send more troops to the south, where US forces have so far borne the brunt of the fighting, and was critical of those countries that hadn't shown a willingness to fight to eliminate the Taliban.
Meanwhile, Rice said in London that the Afghan war was not likely to end soon.
Germany has rejected Gates' call for troops in the south, offering instead an additional 200 soldiers as part of the Quick Reaction Force in northern Mazar-e-Sharif.
NATO's International Security Assistance Force, made up of troops from 37 countries, now has about 43,000 soldiers while an additional 13,000 US troops are participating in a separate operation to hunt down remnants of the Taliban and al-Qeada terrorist network.
