Word: britains
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...bank's impairment charges for soured loans tripled, to $1 billion in the first half of this year vs. the same period in 2008. Just as worrying: a shade under 4% of its home loans were more than three months in arrears, the company said Tuesday. (The average across Britain's banks is 2.4%.) Plans to split the bank into its "good" and "bad" halves - savers' deposits and new lending in the former, existing loans in the latter, as a prelude to reprivatization - still await the E.U.'s stamp of approval. (Watch an interview with British PM Gordon Brown...
...consolidate the success of Panther's Claw will make the logic for sending additional British troops to Afghanistan irresistible, according to Paul Cornish, head of the International Security Program at the London-based think tank Chatham House. Eventually, however, the British public will demand that politicians articulate an endgame. "Britain will commit additional troops because there's such a sound logic to it militarily," says Cornish. "But I can't see how we can plan to be there for the next two or three decades. I just don't see how that's possible, both politically and militarily...
...emphasis on diplomatic measures in Afghanistan comes at a time when NATO officials see Britain's commitment as essential to the security of the alliance. Britain has the highest number of troops in Afghanistan behind the U.S.; while other European countries have sent troops only for nation-building exercises in stable parts of the country, the Brits (along with the Canadians) have taken heavy casualties. In his first speech as the new head of the alliance on Monday, Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen reiterated that NATO's priority must be the war in Afghanistan. "NATO is a strong military alliance...
...part, Britain's House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee says NATO's inability to even the burden-sharing among member countries undermines the central mission of the alliance and raises the "real possibility that without a more equitable distribution of responsibility and risk, NATO's ... reputation as a military alliance, capable of undertaking out-of-area operations, [will be] seriously damaged...
...Britain, however, the war in Afghanistan has led to soul-searching over the role of the country's troops not only in NATO but in the wider world as well. Still shaped by its fortitude in the "good war" against the Nazis, Britain has had its conception of its military power - and its confidence in what it's fighting for - shaken by the more recent conflicts in Iraq and, now, Afghanistan. "We still have a very strong and patriotic affection for our troops," says Chatham House's Cornish. "But many British people feel conflicted by the desire to support...