The defence secretary, Liam Fox, wants to speed up the withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan, saying that Britian is not a "global policeman".

His comments came as he joined the foreign secretary, William Hague, and the international development secretary, Andrew Mitchell, on a trip to Afghanistan to meet political and military leaders in the capital, Kabul.

While Hague indicated that the new coalition government was not planning a strategic break with existing UK policy on Afghanistan, Fox said expectations of Britain's role in the country needed to change. He also risked angering the president, Hamid Karzai, by describing Afghanistan as a "broken 13th-century country".

In an interview with the Times, published ahead of their arrival today, Fox said the goals of the mission in Afghanistan were primarily military rather than humanitarian.

the sooner we remove our troops from there the better
if they wish to butcher each other after we leave that's their problem …

The problem is that they'll butcher each other with nukes and biological weapons