The United States said on Saturday it could not yet commit to the head of Nato's aim of ending the foreign combat role in Afghanistan by the end of 2014 but would make its own decision based on security conditions. "We're the United States. We want to make our own decision based on our own read on the situation," a senior US official told reporters during a Nato summit in Lisbon.
The United States' reluctance to endorse the date highlights the domestic pressures on President Barack Obama. The Democratic president has been sharply criticised by Republicans for setting a July 2011 date to begin withdrawing US troops. Critics say the deadline emboldens the Taliban.
Leaders of Nato states in Europe, too, face their own domestic concerns - voters want them to wind down their involvement in the increasingly unpopular and expensive war. Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told a news conference that the aim was to hand security responsibility to Afghan forces gradually between 2011 and 2014, and for foreign troops serving in the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to cease combat before 2015.
"I don't foresee ISAF troops in a combat role beyond 2014, provided of course that the security situation allows us to move into a more supportive role," Rasmussen told reporters. Another senior US official said the United States had not definitively taken that decision yet.
"The issue of changing the combat mission is an independent national decision which will be made by all 28 nations of Nato. In the case of the United States, we simply have not taken that decision yet," the official said. Obama is reviewing the US strategy in Afghanistan after sending 30,000 more troops there to break the momentum of a resurgent Taliban. Violence is at an all-time high, with record civilian and military casualties, but the president is not expected to make major changes to the way the war is fought.
The United States fully endorses Nato's goal, formally announced at the Lisbon conference, of having Afghan security forces in the lead in all provinces by the end of 2014. But US officials have not said that this will signal an end to the US combat mission. Instead, military officials point to the example of Iraq, where the US combat mission was officially declared over last August, more than a year after US forces pulled out of Iraq's towns and cities.
"We're not saying we're not going to end our combat mission (by the end of 2014). What we're saying is we'll make our decision closer to that date," the first US official said. "We'll be making our decision based on the conditions on the ground."