“I do believe that additional international troops will be needed in the future,’’ agreed Kai Eide, the top UN official in Afghanistan.
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen cited “broad support’’ from defense ministers to stick with a war strategy devised by American commander General Stanley McChrystal that calls for tens of thousands more combat troops - including as many as 80,000 Americans.
The NATO ministers did not, however, discuss specific numbers of troops to be sent, Rasmussen said. Gates added he did not seek specific aid promises.
NATO officials have largely resisted American entreaties to boost their troop contributions to Afghanistan. Britain recently pledged to send 500 troops but only if NATO and the US increased their numbers as well.
The Obama administration is still mulling whether to approve McChrystal’s proposed strategy aimed at eliminating terrorist threats by curbing the Taliban, in part by securing communities and protecting local Afghan people.
Top Obama advisers, including Vice President Joe Biden, favor a more focused war strategy of targeting Al Qaeda leaders in neighboring Pakistan with armed unmanned spy planes and special forces strikes.
In Washington, a senior administration official said yesterday that Obama was far from settled on a strategy and that there were no assurances that McChrystal will get what he is seeking. The official was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Gates said yesterday that the “analytical phase’’ of the administration’s war strategy review was nearing an end, but cautioned that Obama will sift over options provided by his national security team over the next two to three weeks. That target date could coincide closely with the planned Nov. 7 election runoff between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his challenger, Abdullah Abdullah.
An estimated 104,000 US and NATO troops will be in Afghanistan by the end of the year - two-thirds of which are American.
