Holbrooke denies exit strategy for Afghanistan

President Barack Obama's special representative said Monday there will be some drawdown of American troops in Afghanistan next year but the US combat mission will not end until 2014. Richard Holbrooke said there was no exit strategy for Afghanistan but rather a transition plan, which will be presented at a Nato summit in Lisbon, Portugal, this weekend.
Obama has set July 2011 as a target to begin drawing down US troops if conditions allow, but American officials expect troops to be in Afghanistan for some time after that. President Hamid Karzai has said he wants Afghan security forces to be able to take the lead in protecting and defending the nation by 2014. The US and its allies will keep troops in the country past that date but they will have a training role.
``We do not have an exit strategy but a transition strategy,'' Holbrooke said, adding that ``2014 is not the end of international presence in Afghanistan (but) to be sure there will be some drawdown (of troops) in July next year. The size and pace will be decided by the president.''
Holbrookí said Pakistan ``must be part of a solution if there is going to be a solution.'' He said that for the conflicts to end in both countries, both need to find ``a common purpose'' and work together. Before a meeting with army Chief of Staff Pervez Ashfaq Kiyani and other Pakistani leaders, Holbrooke said ``our main effort is to overcome decades of fear and overlapping of territorial claims and rgach an arrangement where Islamabad and Kabul realise they have a common enemy and it needs to be dealt with.''
Those enemies range from al Qaida to Tehrik-e-Taliban to be the Haqqani network, a group that has been attacking Nato forces in Afghanistan from sanctuaries in Pakistan's tribal regions, he said. "These groups are getting closer and closer together and we need to work together against these common enemies,'' Holbrooke told reporters. Karzai has urged US and coalition forces to focus their attention away from Afghan villages to Pakistani tribal regions such as North Waziristan where insurgents have found safe havens.