US President Barack Obama on Monday huddled with his war Cabinet for what officials indicated could be the final time before he decides whether to dispatch tens of thousands more US troops to Afghanistan.
Top officials at the two-hour meeting, the ninth gathering of Obama’s national security team to review Afghan strategy since August, included Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The meeting began just before 8:15pm and lasted about two hours.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters that a decision on troops could be announced as early as next week.
“It’s not going to happen this week,” he said. “Obviously the first possible time would be some time next week.”
National Public Radio, citing unnamed sources, said that Obama planned to make the announcement in an address to the nation next Tuesday.
An administration official said on Monday it could “possibly” be the last time Obama will consult his team before making an announcement, though he cautioned “that’s not something we can say definitively.”
Attending the war meeting via videoconference were two men very much at odds over the decision: General Stanley McChrystal, commander of US and NATO troops in Afghanistan, and Karl Eikenberry, US ambassador in Kabul.
McChrystal has asked for about 40,000 more US troops, cautioning that the intensifying Taliban insurgency could win out if he does not get the reinforcements within a year. There are currently 68,000 US troops in Afghanistan.
In diplomatic cables leaked earlier this month, Eikenberry — a retired army general who commanded US forces in Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007 — warned against sending more troops until Afghan President Hamid Karzai gets a grip on the rampant corruption in his administration.
While Karzai has earned the opprobrium of the international community since a fraud-tainted election in August highlighted the massive levels of official graft in Afghanistan, his inauguration speech on Thursday generally won praise.
He pledged to clean up corruption, eradicate drug production and trafficking, work towards ending a Taliban-led insurgency and see that Afghan security forces can take over from international forces in five years.
Clinton, attending the inauguration, sought to turn the page and hailed the speech as a “new starting point” for the war-torn country.
But some of the US’ allies in the war, now in its ninth year, are no longer willing to wait for the tide to turn: Canada and the Netherlands have announced plans to pull their troops out next year and in 2011 respectively.
Gates in a speech in Canada on Friday said US forces could provide a “sustainable” replacement in the south for the departing Dutch and Canadian troops.
But he called on other allies to step forward, saying the Afghan effort would “require more commitment, more sacrifice, and more patience from the community of free nations.”
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