David Cameron said British troops would …

David Cameron said British troops would be withdraw from Afghanistan by 2015.

Then his defence secretary, Liam Fox, said British troops would stay ‘until the job is done’.

And now Cameron’s foreign secretary, William Hague, says he expects Afghans to take over responsibility for security of their country by 2014.

Why the confusion? I’ll let Simon Tisdall explain:

[O]n Afghanistan [William Hague] offered no reason to contradict the view that Britain’s reluctant involvement there will go on and on – until Barack Obama decides we can leave.

The Taliban meanwhile told the BBC’s John Simpson that they would not negotiate with Hamid Karzai or NATO until foreign troops left Afghanistan, because they felt were they were ‘winning’.