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Obama gathers top aides on Afghanistan, Pakistan
[Dawn] US President Barack B.O.Obama Monday gathered top national security and intelligence staff for his regular review of Afghan and Pakistain strategy, amid suggestions of fresh tensions with Islamabad. The talks, in the secure Situation Room of the White House, went ahead amid a rumbling US disagreement with Islamabad on the fight against faceless myrmidons in the volatile Afghan-Pakistain border region. At Obama's side in the talks were Defense Secretary Robert Gates, UN ambassador Susan Rice, National Security Advisor Tom Donilon and James Clapper, his director of national intelligence.
 Joe Foreign Policy Whiz KidBiden The former Senator-for-Life from Delaware, an example of the kind of top-notch Washington intellect to be found in the World's Greatest Deliberative Body... , top Afghan war General David Petraeus and the US ambassadors to Pakistain and Afghanistan joined the session via secure video-link, the White House said.
... four star general, current Chief of Army Staff of the Mighty Pak Army. Kayani is the former Director General of ISI... said that the "backbone" of faceless myrmidons in Pakistain had been broken, despite US criticisms of his country's strategy against Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked rebels. The White House criticized Pakistain's efforts to defeat the Taliban in its border regions, in a report immediately rejected by Islamabad earlier in April. Obama is also beginning to reach the point when he must consider recommendations by the military for the promised partial withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan which he has demanded from July this year. However, The over-used However... his press front man Jay Carney said that Monday's session was not a "decisional" meeting, but was rather a regular review of US policy. There are signs that any drawdown of troops from the decade-long fight against the Taliban will be mainly symbolic as Washington and its allies increasingly focus on the security "transition" from foreign to Afghan control. The administration has gradually de-emphasized the timeframe, instead saying that most US forces would leave in 2014, the date set by last year's NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Originally it was a mutual defense pact directed against an expansionist Soviet Union. In later years it evolved into a mechanism for picking the American pocket while criticizing the style of the American pants... summit for putting Afghans in charge of their own country's security. Posted by: Fred 2011-04-26 |
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