LONDON, Dec 15 (Reuters) - The cost of British military operations in Afghanistan will rise more than 50 percent this year, a parliamentary committee said on Monday, as it called on the government to better justify the expense. According to figures provided by the Treasury, costs will rise to 2.32 billion pounds ($3.5 bln) in 2008/9, from 1.51 billion in 2007/08, an increase of 54 percent, as Britain concentrates on the deepening Afghan conflict. And despite an intention to withdraw almost all its forces from Iraq in the first half of next year, the cost of Britain's operations in Iraq will fall by just 4.1 percent, parliament's Defence Committee said in a statement. In total, the government is requesting 3.74 billion pounds to meet the cost of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2008/9, which the committee described as a "very significant sum of public money" that needed to be more fully explained. "The reasons for the increases and the magnitude of costs in general are still not transparent enough," said James Arbuthnot, the chairman of the committee. "The Ministry of Defence needs to provide a more coherent picture of what these costs really represent on the ground in the future." Much of the increase is expected to come from providing more armoured vehicles to the 8,100 troops serving in Afghanistan, where the Taliban has mounted a resurgence in the past six months, detonating roadside bombs and carrying out ambushes. Four British troops have been killed in Afghanistan in the past week and more than 130 have died since the conflict began in late 2001, when Britain joined the U.S.-led invasion. The government announced in October it would buy 700 more armoured vehicles for frontline troops, largely a response to the Taliban's increasing ability to hit convoys and destroy lightly armed vehicles with powerful roadside bombs. As a response to the rising costs of the conflict, and the increasing constraints on government spending brought about by the global credit crisis, the government also announced last week that it was delaying the delivery of aircraft carriers. Instead of the two Royal Navy aircraft carriers entering service between 2014 and 2016, part of a 4 billion pound defence project, they will now come into service two years later. There are also concerns in defence circles that the government may decide to cut back on its commitment to the pan-European Airbus A400 military plane project, although there has been no indication from Britain that that is the case. (Reporting by Luke Baker; Editing by Charles Dick)
People stand beside burnt military vehicles on the outskirts of Peshawar December 7, 2008. Hordes of Pakistani militants set on fire 96 trucks carrying Humvees and military vehicles for Western forces ...
