Britain's armed forces are tackling fierce combat in Iraq and Afghanistan without adequate resources or government support, the former head of the country's army said yesterday.

"It is up to the government of the day to decide what commitments it wishes to take on, and I think I made it very clear that it is the constitutional duty of the armed forces to follow the decision of the government," said General Mike Jackson, who retired in August as chief of the General Staff.

"But if you will the ends, you must will the means."

Jackson was expanding on comments he made in a lecture Wednesday night in which he said predictions about the scale and intensity of fighting in recent major conflicts had been outstripped by realities on the ground.

"I have never come to the judgment that we were asked to do things that were undoable. That's not my point," Jackson said in an interview with British Broadcasting Corp. radio.

"My point is that overall, the ethos, the well-being of the soldier who does these things, I didn't feel was right at the forefront, where it ought to be."

In his lecture, Jackson said Prime Minister Tony Blair's government had failed to put "soldier, sailor and airman" at the forefront of its priorities.

He said defence planners had shown "considerable inertia" when drawing up strategy for campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"The army is one of this country's greatest national assets, but to sustain that position and, I hope, to improve it, the army must have the right capabilities, the right structure, the right people, the right training, the right support and the right accommodation," Jackson said.

He said a salary of around 1,000 pounds (US$1,970) a month for a private soldier was "hardly an impressive figure," and claimed some military accommodation was shamefully poor.

The Ministry of Defence responded with a statement saying it did not agree with everything Jackson said, but "we are always the first to recognize for example in relation to medical services and accommodation that although we have delivered real improvements, there is more we can do."

Jackson also lambasted poor coordination between diplomats and military chiefs.

He said efforts in Afghanistan to eradicate heroin poppies had placed soldiers at risk because it appears to poor farmers to be an action "directed personally at him, his family."

"His wrath will turn not to the British Foreign Office, but to the British soldier on the ground," Jackson said.

Though he urged Blair's government not to sanction any early withdrawal from Iraq, Jackson said the armed forces had been stretched by current deployments.

"We could well be asking too much over the long haul in terms of frequency of operational deployment, to say nothing of the conditions of service under which our soldiers undertake this long haul," Jackson said.

Jackson's comments follow remarks in October by General Richard Dannatt, the current head of all three of Britain's armed forces, who called for troops to be withdrawn from Iraq "sometime soon" and said that their presence was provoking rather than preventing violence.

Last month, Britain's National Audit Office said the country's armed forces were 5,170 below strength, a shortfall of 2.8 per cent.

"It is now clear that the confidence of the most senior staff in the armed forces in the government's defence strategy is badly shaken," said Nick Harvey, lawmaker and defence spokesman with the minor opposition party Liberal Democrats.

Source: China Daily