Under pressure over the increasingly unpopular war in Afghanistan, US President Barack Obama underlined the limited nature of his "fairly modest" objectives and insisted they can be achieved. In an interview with CBS's "Early Show" broadcast on Sunday, Obama said no one expected the US-led effort in Afghanistan to turn the country into a perfect Western-style democracy.
"What we're looking to do is difficult, very difficult, but it's a fairly modest goal, which is, don't allow terrorists to operate from this region; don't allow them to create big training camps and to plan attacks against the US homeland with impunity. "That can be accomplished," he said. "We can stabilise Afghanistan sufficiently and we can get enough co-operation from Pakistan that we are not magnifying the threat against the homeland."