White House would consider Afghanistan ‘zero’ option
Worldwide, Daily news | ankakh | January 9, 2013 17:12President Barack Obama would consider a plan for post-2014 Afghanistan that would leave no American troops in the country, a senior US official said, ahead of talks with President Hamid Karzai later this week.
Officials however stressed that Obama, mulling how quickly to draw down US soldiers from the country, would not be guided by specific future troop levels, but would decide the fate of the American presence based on strategic needs.
Asked whether Obama would consider a scenario in which all US troops left and there was no residual force in Afghanistan, Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security advisor said: “That would be an option we would consider.”
“We wouldn’t rule out any option. We are not guided by the goal of a certain number of troops in the country. We are guided by the objective that the president has set,” Rhodes told reporters Tuesday.
Obama’s goals are to ensure that Afghanistan’s new national army has the capacity and equipment to defend itself and to ensure that Al-Qaeda cannot make a post-war comeback and again find safe haven.
Rhodes said Obama “is focused on how do we most successfully achieve our core objectives while bringing the war to an end by the end of 2014, as the president and his allies and the Afghans have committed to do.”
He added that the administration’s “core goal” is “to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda, and to ensure that they can never return to Afghanistan and use it as a safe haven from which they could launch attacks against the United States or our allies.”
Դիտվել է 1257 անգամ:
Facebook
Tweet This
RSS Feed
Email This Post
Loading ...
