Obama to reveal more on drone strike policy

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama will soon reveal more about the administration's legal rationale for using drone strikes, US Attorney General Eric Holder said on Wednesday.

Holder told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that Obama would address the issue directly "in a relatively short period of time."

Congress has been seeking access to at least 11 memos produced by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel that lay out the legal rationale for using drone strikes to target individuals overseas, but until this week had only been allowed access to four of them.

"I heard you. The president has heard," Holder said. As a result, the administration is prepared to make more materials available, he said.

The Obama administration has increasingly used drone strikes to target militants overseas. In 2011, for example, strikes in Yemen killed US-born Anwar al-Awlaki, accused of being a leader of al Qaeda's Yemen-based affiliate, and his son, also a US citizen.

Civilian casualties from drone strikes have angered local populations and created tension between the United States and Pakistan and Afghanistan. Washington has sought to portray civilian casualties as minimal, but organizations that collect data on these attacks put the number of civilians killed in the hundreds.

"We have talked about a need for greater transparency," Holder told senators.

He predicted there "would be a greater level of comfort" about the use of drones after the information is shared.

On Tuesday, as part of a deal that led the Senate Intelligence Committee to approve the nomination of John Brennan as the new director of the CIA, the administration agreed to share two more of the documents with committee members and some staffers.