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Panetta Says Afghan Combat Missions To End In 2013 |
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Thursday, 2 February 2012U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said U.S. and other foreign troops in Afghanistan will end their combat missions in 2013 and switch to training Afghan government forces in 2014.
"Hopefully by the mid-to-latter part of 2013, we'll be able to make a transition from a combat role to a train, advise and assist role," Panetta told reporters.
Panetta said foreign forces were expected to be "transitioning" their role in Afghanistan as the 2014 drawdown approached. Panetta said that was "what we did in Iraq and it's what we're going to try to do in Afghanistan."
Panetta made his comments on the eve of a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels. They also come after French President Nicolas Sarkozy met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai earlier this week and said NATO would end its mission in Afghanistan in 2013. Sarkozy said some French troops would provide training to Afghan forces after 2013, comments that echoed Panetta's outline to reporters.
Panetta said he wanted to hear more from the French defense minister during the February 2-3 meeting in Brussels.
Panetta described the role of U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2014 as being "pretty robust" and added the change to an advisory and training role "doesn't mean that we're not going to be combat-ready."
"The Washington Post" quoted an unnamed U.S. official as saying "nothing is final" and that decisions about the pace of withdrawal would not be made until a NATO summit in Chicago in May.
An early transition from a combat role also comes ahead of a U.S. presidential election in November and would give incumbent U.S. President Barack Obama an opportunity to say during campaigning that U.S. troops were out of Iraq and would soon be out of Afghanistan. |
Thursday, 2 February 2012
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