Gordon Brown will claim today that more has been done to disable al-Qaida this year than in any year since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. His remarks are designed to bolster waning support for the war as a Comres poll in the Independent on Sunday showed 71% of the British public want troops to leave Afghanistan within a year. In a speech at the lord mayor's banquet, the annual foreign policy address by the prime minister, Brown will promise never to succumb to calls for appeasement, or "subordinate the international good to the mood of the passing moment". David Miliband, the foreign secretary, will travel to Kabul for Karzai's inauguration after making his own speech defending British involvement tomorrow. He is expected to focus on the need for Karzai's government to break out of a cycle of corruption. In his speech Brown will again say there is a direct link between Afghanistan and the threat posed by al-Qaida to the security of the UK. Successive polls show that the British public are sceptical that al-Qaida needs the base of a Taliban-run Afghanistan to pose a serious terrorist threat to the west. The latest MoD figures showed that more than 1,000 seriously wounded or sick British troops have been flown back to the UK this year, a record number. Many strategists argue the true threat to the UK lies in Pakistan, but Brown will say: "We are in Afghanistan because we judge that if the Taliban regained power al-Qaida and other terrorist groups would once more have an environment in which they could operate. We are there because action in Afghanistan is not an alternative to action in Pakistan, but an inseparable support to it. "Make no mistake, al-Qaida has an extensive recruitment network across Africa the Middle East, western Europe - and in the UK. We know that there are still several hundred foreign fighters based in the Fata [tribal] area of Pakistan travelling to training camps to learn bomb making and weapons skills. Al-Qaida also has links to the Afghan and Pakistan Taliban."He will add that "since 2001 nearly 200 people have been convicted of terrorist or terrorist-related offences in Britain", adding almost half pleaded guilty.. Partly due to greater co-operation from the Pakistan military, he will report" "more has been planned and enacted with greater success in this one year to disable al-Qaida than in any year since the original invasion in 2001." Describing al-Qaida as "the biggest source of threat to our national security" he will promise "vigilance in defence of national security will never be sacrificed to expediency. Necessary resolution will never succumb to appeasement. The greater international good will never be subordinated to the mood of the passing moment." He will also argue that Afghanistan shows the need for the UK to run an optimistic and engaged foreign policy. In an implicit rebuff of the Tories' isolationist stand on Europe, he will argue: "At every point in our history where we have looked outwards, we have become stronger. And now, more than ever, there is no future in what was once called 'splendid isolation'."(Guardian)