Brown phones dead soldier's mother over letter

LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Gordon Brown has telephoned the mother of a serviceman killed in Afghanistan to say he "meant no offence" by misspelling the soldier's name in a letter of condolence.

Downing Street was earlier forced to defend the way Brown writes to bereaved families of fallen troops after she described his hand-written letter as a "hastily scrawled insult".

Jacqui Janes had urged him never to send such a letter to a soldier's family again and accused Brown of not caring enough about Britain's armed forces.

Her son, guardsman Jamie Janes, 20, of the 1st Battalion The Grenadier Guards, was killed in an explosion while on foot patrol in Helmand province, Afghanistan, last month.

A Downing Street spokesman said that as soon as the PM was told about his mistake he personally contacted the mother to make "absolutely clear that he never meant any offence."

He had spoken to her to "underline his deepest sympathies for her, his complete admiration and thanks for the bravery and sacrifice of her son".

According to The Sun newspaper, the mother was angered by the fact that Brown had appeared to misspell her son's name. The paper has reproduced the hand-written note.

She complained the letter was scrawled so quickly she could hardly read it and said some of the words were unfinished or incorrectly spelt.

"He couldn't even be bothered to get our family name right. That made me so angry," she told the paper.