After Nobel nod, Obama convenes Afghan war council
Hours after being named a Nobel peace laureate, President Barack
Obama Friday shouldered his duties as commander in chief of the US armed
forces and convened his war council for crucial talks on Afghan
strategy. Obama gathered his top political, military, and security aides
in the secure Situation Room of the White House for the fourth in a
series of in-depth consultations on rescuing the US mission in the
unpopular eight-year war.
"The president had a robust conversation about the security and
political challenges in Afghanistan and the options for building a
strategic approach going forward," an administration official told AFP.
Obama "looks forward to continued discussion on Wednesday," the
official said.
Obama was scheduled to be briefed by Afghan war commander General
Stanley McChrystal on his report warning that the US counter-insurgency
mission in Afghanistan could fail within a year without more troops. The
meeting came amid more suggestions of tension between the White House
and top military brass on the best way forward. On Thursday, the White
House made a clear distinction between Al-Qaeda and the lesser threat
they say is posed to US security by the Taliban, fueling suspicion that
Obama was leaning away from sending tens of thousands more troops to
Afghanistan to escalate the counter-insurgency.
Hours later, in a leak to the Wall Street Journal, it emerged that
McChrystal had offered the president several alternative options,
including a maximum injection of 60,000 extra troops.
That figure is more than the previously reported 40,000-strong
deployment that McChrystal apparently prefers. White House spokesman
Robert Gibbs said that Friday's meeting could be followed by more than
one meeting before the president makes a decision on strategy, still
several weeks away. The Taliban scoffed at Obama's shock Nobel prize
award on Friday, suggesting his policy towards Afghanistan barely
differed from that of ex-president George W. Bush.
"We have seen no change in his strategy for peace," said Zabihullah
Mujahid, a spokesman for the Islamic fundamentalist militants.
"He has done nothing for peace in Afghanistan," Mujahid told AFP. "He
has not taken a single step for peace in Afghanistan or to make this
country stable." Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has seen his stock
diminish in the United States amid election fraud allegations,
immediately congratulated Obama on Friday, saying he was the
"appropriate" person to win the peace prize. "His hard work and his new
vision on global relations, his will and efforts for creating friendly
and good relations at global level and global peace make him the
appropriate recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize," Karzai spokesman Siamak
Hirai told AFP. On Thursday, Gibbs said there was "clearly a difference"
between Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. He said Al-Qaeda was as an "entity
that, through a global, transnational jihadist network, would seek to
strike the US homeland." "I think that the Taliban are obviously
exceedingly bad people that have done awful things.
-AFP
|