Clarification to This Article
Earlier versions of the story contained a sentence that may have given the impression that Presidents Obama and Medvedev discussed START at a meeting in Seoul. Although Obama did see Medvedev in Seoul, they discussed START in Yokohama during the APEC summit one week ago. This version has been corrected.
Earlier versions of the story contained a sentence that may have given the impression that Presidents Obama and Medvedev discussed START at a meeting in Seoul. Although Obama did see Medvedev in Seoul, they discussed START in Yokohama during the APEC summit one week ago. This version has been corrected.
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NATO adopts transition plan for Afghan war
Emphasis on transition
The 2014 deadline
Video
NATO nations meeting in Portugal have agreed to start turning over Afghanistan's security to its military next year. The plan would give local forces full control by 2014. (Nov. 20)
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Both the administration and the Europeans hope that the four-year transition plan will reduce public opposition to the nine-year war. NATO members moving away from a combat role, Obama said, were becoming less reluctant to provide the military trainers needed to ensure Afghan troops were ready to take over.
Canada, which has said it will bring its combat troops home this year, announced last week that it would provide 950 trainers, and a senior U.S. official said that other commitments for about 500 more that would meet the coalition's current needs.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the transition process was underway, with Afghan forces taking the lead from coalition partners in some areas. Initial transition areas are to be decided by NATO, then approved and announced early next year by Karzai.
Officials emphasized that transition did not mean withdrawal, because coalition forces taken out of one area of Afghanistan would be transferred elsewhere inside the country. Each nation makes its own decision on when to withdraw troops.
U.S. forces in Afghanistan now number about 100,000 - compared to about 40,000 from other NATO members and an additional 20 non-NATO countries - and Obama has pledged an initial withdrawal in July. He has said the size and pace of the U.S. drawdown would be determined by "conditions on the ground."
Asked whether he saw a need for any American troops in Afghanistan beyond 2014, Obama responded indirectly. "My first and most important job . . . is to keep the American people safe, so I'll do what's necessary," he said. "That will be true as long as I'm president of the United States . . . and maybe that will be the case in 2014," he said with a smiling reference to his reelection prospects.
"Our every intention is that Afghans are in the lead and we're partnering with them the way we partner with countries around the world" to whom the United States provides security assistance, he said.
The administration is negotiating a long-term bilateral agreement with Afghanistan, slated for completion early next year, that will promise indefinite U.S. security, economic, cultural and development support. That accord is separate from the NATO-Afghan agreement signed Saturday, which officials said was intended to guarantee continued training and equipment for Afghan security forces after 2014.
Obama said he was "pretty confident" that a U.S. counterterrorism capability would be maintained in Afghanistan after the 2014 deadline, "until we have confidence that al-Qaeda is no longer operating and no longer a threat . . . We don't want to find ourselves in a situation where they've waited us out and they have reconsolidated," he said.
"It is a goal to make sure that we are not still engaged in combat operations as we are engaged now," he said. But "beyond that, it's hard to anticipate what will be necessary."
But, he said, "it's a testament to the confidence we have in Gen. Petraeus's plans and the fact that we are much more unified and clear . . . that we are going to achieve the end state."
Petraeus, who presented an update of the war at Saturday's three-hour meeting on Afghanistan, said that momentum had shifted from the Taliban to the coalition. Special Operations "night raids" against Taliban commanders were particularly successful, he said, and had killed or captured more than 370 insurgent leaders in recent months.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/20/AR2010112003992_2.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2010111903160
