President Barack Obama has ordered an interagency review to examine US policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan before a Nato summit in April, the White House said on Tuesday. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington would head the review.
Riedel would look at both military and non-military aspects of US policy in the region and would report directly to Obama and his national security adviser, Jim Jones, Gibbs told reporters aboard a flight to Florida with Obama.
He said the panel would be co-chaired by Richard Holbrooke, Obama's newly named special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Michele Flournoy, co-founder of the Center for a New American Security, who was confirmed on Monday as under-secretary of Defence for policy.
Obama told a news conference at the White House on Monday the United States would need a broader approach to be successful in resolving the conflict in Afghanistan. "We are going to need more effective, co-ordination of our military efforts with diplomatic efforts, with development efforts, with more effective co-ordination with our allies in order for us to be successful," Obama said. Holbrooke is in the region looking at ways to turn back the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, crush al Qaeda and make sure neither Pakistan nor Afghanistan is used as a base for followers of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
In Pakistan, he met President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani and army chief General Ashfaq Kayani. Pakistani officials told Holbrooke a US plan to double the number of troops in Afghanistan to more than 60,000 over the next 18 months would only work if it was accompanied by political engagement with Taliban moderates.
"Obviously there are some irreconcilable elements and no one wants to deal with them ... but there is a reconcilable element and we should not overlook their importance," Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said.