This week Nato foreign ministers and officials will meet assemble in the UK capital for the Afghanistan London Conference.

Just as it was in 2009, Afghanistan is the country on every diplomat's lips in 2010. Repeated discourses on the reason.

Why allied troops are in Afghanistan do not seem to be seeping through to the public consciousness, but the coalition mission remains to put home-grown policing and military bodies in a position to take care of their country's own security.

While Barack Obama's 30,000-strong troop surge and the continued presence of British troops in some of the most war-torn parts of.

The country (the UK death-toll in Afghanistan is all but certain to overtake the total number of deaths in the Falklands conflict this year) will dominate headlines, the priority for the west is improving Afghan governance.

"Afghanistan really depends not just on the security and the fighting but on the governance of the country," David Livingstone, associate fellow at Chatham House's international security programme. "It's not a matter of a shooting war; nothing will be resolved by both sides trying to kill each other. The civil action community must take the lead. As with all of these insurgents conflicts, we have to talk to the insurgents, whether that will happen this year or longer depends on how long the Taliban feel they have the upper hand."

In neighbouring Pakistan, the embattled government seems to have created some breathing space by driving back Taliban and al-Qaida linked Islamic fundamentalism encroaching on Islamabad.

A massive military offensive was launched against Taliban fighters who briefly occupied and governed the Swat Valley, later being pushed back to the border region with Afghanistan; virtually ungovernable due to its tribal roots and mountainous terrain.

Mr Livingstone told inthenews.co.uk that the reach of the fundamentalists went further than the mountains however.

"Taliban propaganda is already being peddled in the Muslim community in India," he explained.

"Both Pakistan and India are nuclear countries and you cannot have an ungoverned space bordering a country which has nuclear weapons."

In India, however, a comparatively stable 12 months is in the offing.

"There's not going to be anything major," Dr Marie Lall, associate fellow of Chatham House's Asia programme told inthenews.co.uk.

"We can't speculate on terrorism threats and rural growth is monsoon dependent so we can't speculate whether there's going to be heavy rains. I don't predict any major change in direction of domestic or foreign policy."

In Sri Lanka meanwhile Mahinda Rajapaksa faces a strong challenge from the former commander of the country's armed forces, Sarath Fonseka, to be re-elected as president in the first polls to be held since the end of the 26-year civil war with Tamil Tiger rebels last year.