Britain's biggest offensive troop deployment for a decade marks the coalition's acceptance that its early optimism over the rout of al-Qaeda was misplaced.But while the announcement was a surprise, it marked the end of a protracted wait for hundreds of marines who have been on standby since last October, on ships in the Arabian Sea and at their UK bases.

Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary, announcing the deployment of 1,700 soldiers to Afghanistan, said recent operations in the mountains near Gardez, close to the Pakistani border, had underlined the continuing threat from al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters.

The US needed extra troops because pockets of al-Qaeda and the Taliban were widely spread. It wanted the Royal Marine Commandos because they were skilled in mountain warfare.

It is now clear that when the Taliban fled Kabul, the Afghan capital and its power base in the southern city of Kandahar, thousands of Afghan fighters, and the al-Qaeda fighters who are mostly non-Afghan, fled to the mountains.

This was a tactic that the Russians tried unsuccessfully to deal with in their 10-year struggle to subdue Afghanistan's Mujahideen guerrillas in the 1980s.

Charles Heyman, editor of Jane's World Armies, said 10,000 fighters may have slipped into the mountains. "They will take a hell of a lot of shifting. But if Afghanistan is going to be stable, they've got to be shifted," Mr Heyman said.

The US/Afghan Operation Anaconda, near Gardez, illustrated the difficulty of cornering the enemy, who hide out in caves and are familiar with mountain paths to use as escape routes.

At first, US commanders hailed the operation as a big victory, claiming hundreds of enemy fighters had been killed by US air strikes as US and Afghan soldiers attacked on the ground. However, little evidence has since emerged to support this, and claims are now more modest: US spokesmen are saying there is still much to be done in Afghanistan.

Mr Hoon said yesterday: "Left alone, these groups would threaten all that the Afghan people and their supporters in the international community have achieved so far, and would strive to retain Afghanistan as a base for training and organising terrorism."

Officials said yesterday that Royal Marines were well-suited for the job because of their training in snow and in mountains, carried out in Norway.

The sheer size of the deployment - with US and Canadian troops, between 5,000 and 6,000 soldiers will be devoted to rooting out al-Qaeda and Taliban guerrillas - underlined that commanders now recognised the task still facing them. Officials would give no details on where in Afghanistan they might be operating.

Mr Hoon underlined the seriousness with which the government was viewing it. The troops would take part in war fighting operations, he said.

"We will be asking them to risk their lives. Their missions will be conducted in unforgiving and hostile terrain against a dangerous enemy. They may suffer casualties."

The additional UK troops, who will be fully operational by mid-April, will bring the number involved in the Afghan campaign to 6,100, including 1,800 in the international security force in Kabul, and the crews of ships and aircraft also playing roles as they have since October.

Mr Hoon said there had been a "very positive" atmosphere in talks with Turkey on taking over leadership of the Kabul force.

However, officials said that it would have no impact on UK deployments elsewhere.

They also insisted it had no bearing on any possible action in Iraq, and that no contingency planning was going on for such an action.

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The Secretary of State for Defence's statement in the Commons - 18 March 2002