Prime Minister Gordon Brown and military chiefs insisted the war was worth fighting, as a new poll revealed public concern, confusion and scepticism about the Afghan mission and its chance of success.

"If we do not take action in Pakistan and Afghanistan then Al-Qaeda would be plotting more trouble and more chaos in the streets of our cities," Brown told BBC television.

The prime minister had earlier joined Queen Elizabeth II in laying a wreath at the Cenotaph memorial for Remembrance Sunday, which marks the end of World War I on November 11, 1918, and all those killed in conflict since.

Similar services were held across the country and in British bases in Afghanistan, with the memory of past losses magnified by news of another two deaths in southern Afghanistan, where most of Britain's 9,000 troops are based.

One soldier died in a blast near Sangin in Helmand province on Saturday while another died on Sunday of wounds sustained in an explosion, the defence ministry said.

A total of 232 British soldiers have died since the US-led invasion in 2001.

The rising death toll is fueling public unease and Britain's chief of defence staff, Air Chief Marshal Jock Stirrup, admitted the need to win back support for a mission that was far from over.

International forces were unlikely to achieve their goal of handing over security to Afghan forces until 2014, he said.

"General McChrystal estimates that it will not be before 2013. I think that's a little optimistic. I'd say about 2014," Stirrup told the BBC, referring to the US and NATO commander in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal.

Meanwhile Lieutenant General Jim Dutton, the most senior British commander in Afghanistan, told the same programme that public support was "crucially important" for the mission.

"All our populations back home will put up with the cost of this sort of operation -- and I mean the cost in human and financial terms -- if they believe two things: one, that we're right, and two, that we can win," he said.

British troops are training Afghan soldiers and policemen to take over security once they leave, but this strategy was thrown into question this week when a rogue policeman opened fire on British forces, killing five.

A new Comres poll for the BBC revealed that 64 percent of the public think the war is "unwinnable", up six points from July, and more than 40 percent do not understand why Britain is there.

Some 63 percent think troops should be withdrawn as quickly as possible, up three points from August, the poll of 1,009 adults on November 4-5 showed.

However, Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth said this would not affect British strategy.

"British public opinion has been dented by the level of losses that we have received, but we cannot run a campaign like this off the back of an opinion poll," he told Sky News television.

"We have to persevere, we have to show some resolution."

Stirrup said Britain's leaders should make more of their successes in Afghanistan, where he said international troops had inflicted "significant damage" on Al-Qaeda and forced them across the border into Pakistan.

"It's painful and it's slow and it's halting but it is in the right direction," he insisted.

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