LONDON: Afghan President Hamid Karzai and British Prime Minister David Cameron meet on Saturday to sign a partnership agreement setting out how the two countries will work together after British combat troops leave Afghanistan in 2014.
Karzai had been due to visit Britain last month, immediately after the Bonn conference on the future of Afghanistan, but cancelled the trip to return home after scores of people were killed in a wave of sectarian bomb attacks.
Karzai and Cameron are expected to discuss the security situation in Afghanistan, political reform and what support the rest of the world can provide to Afghanistan after 2014.
Western countries plan to remove most combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, handing over security to expanded Afghan security forces.
The new agreement Cameron and Karzai will sign, updating a 2005 pact, sets out how the two countries will cooperate on political dialogue, security, governance and rule of law, economic and social development and cultural links, British officials say.
With voters disillusioned with the huge cost in lives and money of the decade-old Afghan conflict, leaders of cash-strapped Western countries are under pressure to speed up troop withdrawal.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced after talks with Karzai in Paris on Friday that French troops would start handing over security to the Afghan army in March and focus on training until pulling out of Afghanistan completely at the end of 2013.
Paris has 3,600 troops in Afghanistan as part of the 130,000-strong NATO-led force, while Britain has some 9,500.
On the eve of Karzai's visit, Britain's Ministry of Defence announced that a British soldier had been shot dead while on foot patrol in Helmand province on Friday, bringing to 397 the number of Britons killed in Afghanistan since October 2001.
Cameron, who visited British troops in Afghanistan last month, plans to end Britain's combat role by the end of 2014, leaving some troops behind to train their Afghan counterparts.
Cameron has committed Britain to pulling out 500 soldiers this year, cutting its contingent to 9,000, but has not yet set out a timetable for further withdrawals.
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