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The prime minister has announced an international conference in London to plan the exit strategy from Afghanistan will be held early next year.
Gordon Brown revealed the top-level talks during his annual foreign policy speech at the Lord Mayor's Banquet in the City of London last night.
In a wide-ranging address he discussed the campaign in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Britain's role in the world, climate change and the challenge of nuclear proliferation.
But it was the strategy summit that has attracted most attention.
"I want that conference to chart a comprehensive political framework within which the military strategy can be accomplished," he said.
"It should identify a process for transferring district by district to full Afghan control and if at all possible, we should set a timetable for transferring districts to Afghan control starting in 2010."
In his speech the prime minister justified the UK's continued presence in the country.
"The greatest immediate threat to our national security, the greatest current risk to British lives, is that of international terrorism," he said.
"We know that from New York, Bali, Baghdad, Madrid, Mumbai, Peshawar and Rawalpindi to London, men and women - Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, of every faith and none - have been victims of international terrorism.
"I will never compromise when it comes to the safety and security of the British people.
"We have trebled our domestic security budget, doubled our security service staff, and increased by over two thirds the numbers of police dealing day to day with terrorism in the UK, and will always do what is necessary."
Brown said that event such as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 or the release of Nelson Mandela the following year, "teach us that we should use the word 'impossible' with greater care".
He added: "What was yesterday's dream and today's impossibility can become tomorrow's reality."
The prime minister also said that terror plots in the UK "remain under investigation".
He said that since 2001, nearly 200 persons have been convicted of terrorist or terrorist-related offences almost half of those convicted pleaded guilty.
"Make no mistake, al Qaeda has an extensive recruitment network across Africa the Middle East, western Europe and in the UK," he said.
"And we know that there are still several hundred foreign fighters based in the Fata area of Pakistan and travelling to training camps to learn bomb making and weapons skills.
"It is because of the nature of the threat, and because around three quarters of the most serious plots the security services are now tracking in Britain have links to Pakistan, that it does not make sense to confine our defence against terrorism solely to actions inside the UK."
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