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Obama To Announce Afghanistan Decision On December 1 75 days ago
(RTTNews) - U.S. President Barack Obama will make the long-awaited announcement on future Afghan strategy, including his final decision on the deployment of thousands of additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan, on 1st December, announced the White House on Wednesday.
"The president will address the nation on Tuesday at 8:00 pm eastern time (0100 GMT Wednesday) from the military academy at West Point on Afghanistan," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters on Wednesday.
Pointing out that it has been nine years since the United States began its efforts to stabilize Afghanistan, Gibbs said that the present U.S. administration is not planning on staying in the war-torn country for "another eight or nine years."
"Throughout this process, the president has repeatedly pushed and prodded, not simply for how we are going to get a certain number of troops in, but what is the strategy, what has to be implemented ultimately to get them out," he added.
Gibbs' remarks came just a day after Obama said at a joint press conference with visiting Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that he will announce his final decision regarding the deployment of thousands of additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan "shortly," adding that he intends to "finish the job" that began eight years ago with the U.S. invasion of the war-torn country in 2001.
Stressing that the the U.S. has "strategic interests" in making sure al-Qaeda and other allied terror groups are not allowed to use the region as a base for launching terror attacks worldwide, Obama said that Afghan people were "going to have to provide ultimately for their own security".
Describing the ongoing review of Afghan policy as "comprehensive and useful," Obama expressed confidence that the American people will be supportive when they "hear a clear rationale for what we're doing there and how we intend to achieve our goals."
Meanwhile, several U.S. media reports suggested that the U.S. President plans to send between 30,000 and 35,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, slightly lesser that what was requested by the top U.S. commander there.
Gibbs' remarks on Wednesday came just days after Obama held another meeting of his national security team on Monday to decide on future strategy for Afghanistan, including the request from the top U.S. commander there for the deployment of additional 40,000 troops in the war torn country.
It was the ninth such meeting on the Afghan issue since August, and was attended by senior officials including Vice-President Joe Biden, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and U.S. ambassador Karl Eikenberry participated in the discussions through video conferencing.
Earlier, General Stanley McChrystal, the top commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, had submitted a report on the situation in Afghanistan with Washington and the NATO. He had also asked for deployment of 40,000 additional coalition troops in Afghanistan.
U.S. President Barack Obama is currently studying Gen. McChrystal's request for additional troops and was earlier expected to announce his Afghan strategy review soon after his Asian visit. Obama has already held several meetings with a 15-member core group, including US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and his top military commanders, to discuss future strategy on Afghanistan.
Presently, there are some 110,000 foreign troops from more than 42 countries in Afghanistan under the commands of the NATO and the United States, fighting Taliban insurgents. U.S. is the biggest contributor to the coalition forces in Afghanistan, with about 62,000 troops on the ground.
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