Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said conscription may be the answer to increasing the speed of the armed forces build-up.

President Karzai has said the army will need to be 300,000-strong by 2012, in order to be prepared to do without foreign help by 2015.

By that time, he said, Afghanistan should only need help from Western forces to defeat terrorists.

The president believes local Afghan leaders back conscription because the army can provide men from the countryside with a good education.

Conscription was abolished in Afghanistan in 1992.