Washington, Nov 10 (PTI): US President Barack Obama had extensive discussion with the Indian leaders on the challenges being faced in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a senior American official has said as the White House announced to launch the review of the Af-Pak policy.
Last December, Obama had announced surge of thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan and had set July 2011 as the start of the draw down of troops from there.
“The fundamental purpose of the annual review is to assess progress along trend lines,” the senior Administration official said.
“Of course the President’s visit to your country (India) just over the course of this last week has been an important dimension of the review because he, of course, had extensive opportunities to discuss with your national leaders the regional context of the Afghanistan-Pakistan challenge,” the official said in response to a question from PTI.
“We know that there were very fruitful conversations with your national leaders in that context.”
Obama had detailed meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during his three-day stay in India that took him to Mumbai and New Delhi.
Besides the Prime Minister and official delegation-level talks, Obama also met President Pratibha Patil, Congress leader Mrs Sonia Gandhi and Leader of Opposition Mrs Sushma Swaraj.
“So in this sense President trip (to India) itself will be an important input to the review process,” the official said.
“We are aiming for sort of the middle to late December period to report out officially to the President. And then sometime after that there will be a public discussion of the findings,” he said.
Continued presence of terrorist safe haven is one of the fundamental underlying question for the review, he said, adding that this was also reflected in the quarterly Af-Pak report that the White House sent to the Congress in October.
“We do not dispute that there are still safe havens in Pakistan which are fundamentally part of the equation for our campaign in Afghanistan,” the official said.
“Getting at those safe havens is fundamental to our approach. So this will be the key focus items inside the annual review,” the official told reporters.
“One of the important trends of the campaign is that we are seeing some indicators that the Taliban may be under pressure in ways that it has not been under pressure before.”
An area of examination would be identifying which programs or which dimensions of the campaign are putting the Taliban under pressure, he said, adding” and then what are the political impacts of the military campaign that has put the Taliban under that pressure.”