WASHINGTON - Obama administration officials tried again on Thursday to reassure members of Congress anxious about the military buildup in Afghanistan, telling them repeatedly that American troops can begin to withdraw in July 2011. But the lawmakers seemed more interested in how long the withdrawal would take.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said July 2011 "will be the beginning of a process, an inflection point, if you will, of transition for Afghan forces as they begin to assume greater responsibility for security." He went on to say that the pace of the withdrawal would be determined by "conditions on the ground."

"It will be a gradual but inexorable process," Mr. Gates told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in remarks on President Obama's plan to ship about 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan next year, bringing the total American troops there to about 100,000.

Several members of the Foreign Relations Committee clearly wanted far more specifics than Mr. Gates offered in his nuanced remarks. Indeed, Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, was skeptical even about the July 2011 target date for beginning to bring home the troops, calling it "clearly aspirational."

"Can any of you tell me, after July 2011, that we won't have tens of thousands of troops years after that date?" Mr. Menendez asked Mr. Gates, as well as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who were also testifying.

Mrs. Clinton said the "best information available at the moment" pointed to July 2011 as the pivotal moment. But she said that the withdrawal of troops would go on "probably for the foreseeable future," as would requests for "continuing logistical support for the Afghan security force."

Moreover, Mrs. Clinton said, despite the "limited" duration of the American military presence in Afghanistan, "our civilian commitment must continue, even as our troops begin coming home."

"We will be asking the young men and women, who not only serve in the military but are part of our civilian service team, to be taking great risks and facing extraordinary sacrifices," she said, adding that "we will do everything we can to ensure that their sacrifices make our nation safer."

As they have before, Mrs. Clinton and the Pentagon officials asserted, sometimes in the face of skeptics, that problems in Afghanistan and Pakistan must be dealt with together, and that terrorists from Al Qaeda and the Taliban insurgents are part of the same threat, even if they do not always coordinate their efforts.

The officials asserted, too, that the plans to withdraw American troops were definite enough, with the July 2011 starting date, to pressure the Afghan government to assume its responsibilities, yet flexible enough to meet the needs of the American military.

"It's not arbitrary at all," Admiral Mullen said, calling 2011 the right time to begin the transition to full Afghan control "responsibly and based on conditions."

Some members of Congress, notably Senator John McCain, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, have argued that it is unwise to set even an initial withdrawal date because doing so encourages an enemy. But Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts and chairman of the foreign relations panel, disagreed. Setting a target date "will help create a sense of urgency" among Afghans, Mr. Kerry said.

"And for the Afghans who chafe at foreign boots on their soil, it sends a message that while America will remain committed to the Afghan people, we aren't interested in a permanent occupation," Mr. Kerry said.

Senator Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia, wanted to know just what "conditions on the ground" would indicate that the withdrawal process could begin.

Mrs. Clinton said, "I think you raised a very profoundly important question." Part of the answer, she said, is "decentralization of government's function and authority" to reflect the way the mountainous, mostly rural country actually operates.

The Obama administration has tried to distinguish its efforts in Afghanistan from what it has characterized as the Bush administration's overly ambitious goals to build a democratic government in Iraq. Mr. Kerry said he was pleased that the approach to Afghanistan that Mr. Obama laid out did not amount to "an open-ended nation-building exercise or a nationwide counterinsurgency campaign."

But the difference between engaging in "nation-building" and propping up a fledgling Afghan government may not always be easy to discern. For instance, Mrs. Clinton said that America's commitment to Afghanistan was reflected not only by the presence of American troops but also by the significant commitment of American civilians in the country.

"Civilian experts and advisers are helping to craft policy inside government ministries," Mrs. Clinton said, adding that financial aid for those ministries would not be released until American overseers had confidence in them.

At another point, Admiral Mullen noted that the development of a reliable Afghan Army had been slow because "the Taliban make a lot more money than the national security forces right now." (The opium trade is a primary source of income for the Taliban.)

But, Admiral Mullen said, the American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, is seeing to it that that the Afghan forces' pay is being increased significantly, "which we think will have an impact."

By David Stout, The New York Times, December 3, 2009

BRUSSELS -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in Brussels early Friday ahead of meetings with NATO ministers where she will seek to persuade European allies to pledge troops to strengthen the U.S. military escalation in Afghanistan.

Clinton and other U.S. officials have been working the phones for days, trying to secure at least 5,000 soldiers from Europe and elsewhere to add to the U.S. surge of about 30,000.

"We are encouraged that we're going to, beginning tomorrow but not ending tomorrow, have a number of public announcements about additional troop commitments, additional civilian assistance and development aid, as well," Clinton told reporters minutes before her plane took off from Washington on Thursday.

Clinton was also planning to discuss how to coordinate the unwieldy civilian aid effort in the war-torn country, which involves the United Nations, dozens of countries and hundreds of nongovernmental organizations.

"We have a unified military command but we have an 'un-unified' international effort" on civilian aid, the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard C. Holbrooke, told reporters in Brussels on Thursday.

Clinton said her goal was a "coordinating mechanism" for civilian assistance, but U.S. officials denied that they are seeking a high representative. European countries are wary that any such position could marginalize the United Nations' representative in Afghanistan, Kai Eide.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said after President Obama's speech Tuesday that U.S. allies would send at least 5,000 more soldiers to Afghanistan, and possibly several thousand more. However, only a handful of countries have made their commitments public. Britain has promised 500; Italy has said it will send about 1,000; and Poland has said it is likely to provide at least 600.

Some countries are not expected to make commitments before an international conference on Afghanistan scheduled for Jan. 28 in London. They include Germany and France, who are among the largest contributors of troops, with 4,200 and 3,750, respectively.

U.S. officials have asked Germany for additional soldiers numbering "in the low four figures," one diplomat said. The request to France was for 1,500 more troops, according to a report in the newspaper Le Monde.

The U.S. government is also seeking contributions toward training, equipping and funding the Afghan army and police.

Clinton acknowledged that some countries were moving cautiously on the troop decision because of the war's increasing unpopularity.

"There is a desire to be able to explain it to the publics of various countries and to make sure that in coalition governments the political stars are in alignment to be able to announce additional commitments," she said.

Some countries may also feel they are already contributing enough. Non-U.S. military forces in Afghanistan have jumped from about 17,000 to nearly 44,000 in the past two years, according to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. However, some are bound by strict, domestically imposed rules that limit where and how they can operate.

The United States had more than 71,000 troops in Afghanistan at the end of November, according to the Pentagon.

By Mary Beth Sheridan, The Washington Post, December 3, 2009

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama is delaying moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.

A 1995 U.S. law recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital and ordered that the embassy be relocated there. But the law also permits the president to delay the move for six-month periods, based on national security grounds.

Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush invoked the clause during their presidencies.

Obama notified Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton of his decision on Thursday. He first delayed moving the embassy in June.

The location of the embassy is a sensitive issue in efforts to negotiate peace in the Middle East.

The Associated Press, December 3, 2009

Afghanistan drawdown could take 2 to 3 years, defense secretary says

The withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, scheduled to begin in July 2011, will "probably" take two or three years, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Thursday, although he added that "there are no deadlines in terms of when our troops will all be out."

The Pentagon, meanwhile, quietly acknowledged slippage on the front end of the 30,000-troop deployment that President Obama authorized for the first half of 2010.

"They are not all going to be there in six months," a senior military official said. The current thinking, the official said, is that the Pentagon will be able to push about 20,000 to 25,000 troops into the country by late summer, but that the final brigade -- about 5,000 troops -- will probably not arrive until early fall.

New details fleshed out the revamped strategy Obama outlined Tuesday night as Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before Congress on the plan for a second day.

In an opening statement and in comments at a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Gates tried to clarify his response to sharp questioning the day before on whether the deadline to begin withdrawal was as hard and fast as Obama had appeared to make it.

"July 2011, the time at which the president said the United States will begin to draw down our forces, will be the beginning of a process," Gates said. "But the pace and character of that drawdown, which districts and provinces are turned over and when, will be determined by conditions on the ground. It will be a gradual but inexorable process."

Those provinces and districts, a senior Pentagon official said, are likely to be areas that already are relatively peaceful, adding, "There are places we could transfer now."

The official described the deployment curve as beginning at a baseline of the 68,000 U.S. troops now in Afghanistan, rising at a 45-degree angle to 100,000, then continuing horizontally until July 2011 before beginning to slope back down. The fall "could be steep if everything is hunky-dory," he said, but "it could be much more elongated."

In Kabul on Thursday, U.S. officials sought to assure anxious Afghan leaders that despite the withdrawal deadline, Afghanistan will not be abandoned. Speaking with Afghan legislators, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander, insisted that the United States will ensure Afghan forces are ready to provide security before there are any meaningful reductions in the U.S. presence.

Still, Obama's speech has touched a nerve in Afghanistan, where large segments of the population remain deeply scarred by the U.S. decision to disengage soon after the Soviet Union pulled out its troops in 1989. The end of the proxy war between two superpowers spawned a civil war marked by some of the most intense combat seen in more than three decades of nonstop conflict in Afghanistan.

At a London news conference, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani sparred with reporters who asked him to respond to British and U.S. charges that Pakistan has been lax in locating al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in sanctuaries along its western border with Afghanistan.

"I doubt the information which you are giving is correct," Gillani said, "because I don't think Osama bin Laden is in Pakistan." He said that neither Britain nor the United States had provided actionable intelligence about bin Laden's whereabouts, and that his government shared whatever intelligence it did have with them.

Clinton left Washington immediately after Thursday's hearing for Brussels, where she was to brief NATO allies on the strategy and solicit more allied aid. In the first of what the administration hopes will be a series of announcements, Italy said it will send 1,000 more troops to Afghanistan.

By Karen DeYoung, The Washington Post, December 4, 2009

BRUSSELS - After months of anguished debate in the United States over how many new troops to send to Afghanistan, the numbers game switched to Europe on Friday, with NATO announcing that it planned to commit an additional 7,000 soldiers to the coalition in Afghanistan.

NATO portrayed the pledge as a powerful vote of support for the American-led effort. But in Europe as in Washington, arithmetic on troops can get fuzzy. Of the 7,000 troops promised by NATO, from 1,500 to 2,000 are already in Afghanistan, sent months ago to bolster security during the presidential election.

An undisclosed number of the new troops will steer clear of the fighting because they are barred by their countries from combat operations. And two allies, the Netherlands and Canada, still plan to withdraw nearly 5,000 troops in the next two years, offsetting the infusion.

NATO's secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, declined to specify which countries would be sending troops, or when. Nor did Germany and France seem to budge from their reluctance to commit any more soldiers.

Despite all this, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton insisted she was "extremely heartened" by the NATO commitments, which she said would go "a very long way" toward meeting the goals President Obama set out in his strategy for reversing the tide in Afghanistan.

Mrs. Clinton said she expected further pledges from member countries as their leaders navigated domestic political pressures. And she played down suggestions that the 7,000 was less than it seemed.

The United States, she said, originally assumed that the 1,500 troops sent for the election - 700 of them from Britain - would have left the country by now. And she said the distinction between combat troops and trainers was gradually being erased by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the American commander, who plans to pair foreign troops with Afghans in the field.

"This is a significant commitment by our NATO-ISAF partners on behalf of the new strategy," she said, using the acronym for the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.

Some non-NATO countries are making hefty contributions: Georgia is sending two light companies and a heavy battalion - lifting its total commitment to just short of 1,000 soldiers, which Mrs. Clinton said might qualify as the largest contribution of any country on a per capita basis.

Whatever their commitments, NATO allies seemed encouraged by Mr. Obama's pledge to start withdrawing forces in July 2011. That timing initially caused alarm in Europe, because the day after his speech, officials said, the news media here reported 2011 as the time for a complete American withdrawal, not its beginning.

Mrs. Clinton took pains to explain that the pace of the withdrawal was flexible and would hinge on the ability of the United States to successfully hand off responsibility for security to Afghan forces.

Mr. Rasmussen echoed those caveats. "Transition doesn't mean exit," he said at a news conference. "We are not going to leave Afghanistan to fall back into the hands of terrorists and extremists."

Later, he added: "It will not be a run for the exit. It will be a well-coordinated and well-prepared transition."

The meeting of foreign ministers was dominated by talk of troop numbers, but much of the closed-door negotiations was devoted to the civilian part of the strategy, which is widely viewed as poorly coordinated.

The United States has been pressing for some kind of coordinator for international civilian aid, but Europeans have been skeptical of giving sweeping powers to a single person, worried that such a move would elbow aside the United Nations' special representative in Afghanistan, Kai Eide.

"There is a consensus that coordination of the civilian efforts in Afghanistan is inadequate," said a senior American diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to upstage Mrs. Clinton. "We have been searching for a formula that works."

While no decisions have been made, this official said, the job might be held by several people or a committee.

Friday did produce some clarity on troop commitments: 500 from Britain; 1,000 from Poland; 1,000 from Italy, plus more of the Carabinieri, the Italian national police force that is part of the military, to work with the Afghan police. Slovakia is sending a small deployment, while South Korea is sending 400 troops as a training unit.

Mr. Rasmussen said the contributions would come from 25 nations, though many of the smaller deployments had yet to be made public. Still, a senior NATO official said these were "real numbers" and did not include what NATO hoped it would receive from Germany and France.

The Germans and French have been asked for at least 3,500 troops, officials here said, but they have said they will not respond until after an international conference on Afghanistan scheduled for Jan. 28 in London.

"No one expected that three or four days after Obama's speech, we should make our strategy clear," said the German foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle . When asked whether France intended to increase its presence, the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, said, "For the time being, no improvement in troops."

Public sentiment against the war is running high in both of those countries. But American officials hope President Nicolas Sarkozy of France will be able to make troop decisions after important regional elections in March. In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel, emboldened by a new center-right coalition, is expected to submit a new request for troops to Parliament next year.

Troop numbers aside, several participants said the meeting underscored a new urgency about Afghanistan that reflected both the completion of Mr. Obama's strategic review and the messy election, which helped to show the deteriorating security situation in the country.

"I've been to a lot of these meetings, and this is the most positive I remember," said Mr. Eide, a Norwegian diplomat. "I think that governments recognize the need to act, before the situation becomes irreversible."

Steven Erlanger contributed reporting from Paris.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 11, 2009
An article on Saturday about new NATO troop commitments to Afghanistan misstated the additional number pledged by Italy. It is 1,000 - not 600.

By Mark Landler, The New York Times, December 4, 2009

BRUSSELS - Some two dozen countries will send an estimated 7,000 more troops to Afghanistan next year, the chief of NATO said Friday as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told her allied counterparts that an infusion of forces is crucial to turning the tide in the long war.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen of Denmark told reporters at NATO headquarters that at least 25 nations would provide the additional forces in Afghanistan in 2010, "with more to come." And he said the 44 countries now involved are "absolutely united" in their commitment to seeing the eight-year war through to a successful outcome.

The troop estimate was 2,000 higher than the 5,000-strong pledges that Ramussen cited Tuesday, after President Barack Obama announced his decision to bolster the United States' war effort. Obama said he will send 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan by next fall.

"The strongest message in the room today was solidarity," Rasmussen said. "Nations are backing up their words with deeds."

U.S. Navy Adm. James Stavridis, the top NATO and U.S. commander in Europe, said in an Associated Press interview during a break in the talks that he believes several thousand more non-U.S. troops may be contributed next year, in addition to the 7,000 cited by Fogh Rasmussen.

"What we are all underlining to potential troop contributors is that we are truly asking for emphasis in the training area," Stavridis said. "And what I'm hearing is that we'll get very good responses."

Clinton told allied foreign ministers that it was essential that contributions to the war effort be provided as quickly as possible. She thanked Italy and Britain for their announcements of new troop contributions and said non-military assistance is equally important.

"The need for additional forces is urgent, but their presence will not be indefinite," she told the North Atlantic Council, NATO's highest political council.

She cited President Barack Obama's pledge on Tuesday to begin withdrawing U.S. forces in July 2011.

"At that time, we will begin to transfer authority and responsibility to Afghan security forces removing combat forces from Afghanistan over time with the assurance that Afghanistan's future, and ours, is secure," Clinton said, according to a copy of her prepared remarks to the closed-door meeting.

"The pace, size, and scope of the drawdown will be predicated on the situation on the ground. If things are going well, a larger number of forces could be removed from more areas. If not, the size and speed of the drawdown will be adjusted accordingly."

In his remarks to reporters, Fogh Rasmussen made a similar point.

"Transition (to Afghan control) does not mean exit," he said.

Clinton acknowledged the sacrifice, in blood and treasure, that many allied countries have paid in Afghanistan over the past eight years.

"Today, our people are weary of war," she said. "But we cannot ignore reality. The extremists continue to target innocent people and sow destruction across continents. From the remote mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan, they plot future attacks. As Secretary General Rasmussen said earlier this week, `This is our fight, together.' And we must finish it together."

She thanked Italy for its announcement that it will send another 1,000 troops, and for Britain's pledge of another 500.

"I look forward to discussing further commitments with many of you today and in the coming days," she said. "Additional troops, enhanced support for the vital training mission, and added civilian assistance will help deny al-Qaida a safe haven, reverse the Taliban's momentum, and strengthen the capacity of the Afghans to take responsibility for their own security."

Fogh Rasmussen provided no breakdown of the 7,000 troops expected. But other NATO officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the figures were not being publicly released, said firm commitments of extra troops totaled about 5,500, with roughly another 1,500 expected on the basis of unspecified "indications" from certain countries.

Clinton sought to strike a delicate balance between stiffening allied resolve for hard combat in Afghanistan while also promising that it will not last for decades.

"Even as we signal resolve through the deployment of additional forces and a long-term civilian commitment, we want to send a signal that our combat presence is not permanent, and to provide a sense of urgency to the Afghans to do for themselves what we know they're capable of doing," she said.

"But I want to stress that this timeframe does not mean that we can or will end our commitment to Afghanistan, Pakistan, or the region. Our political, economic, and diplomatic presence in the region will endure. I know that this has not always been the case in the past, but we intend the future to be different than the past."

The central theme of her remarks was a need for unity of purpose.

"We are in this together. And only together can we succeed," she said.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top American commander in Afghanistan, also attended the meeting of NATO's main political council to explain the 43-nation military mission, which he has sought to revise and reinforce since he took over command last June. He has described conditions in the fight against Taliban extremists as serious and deteriorating.

McChrystal was headed to Washington afterward to prepare for congressional testimony next week - his first since assuming command in Kabul last June.

Allied governments need to be able to sell their publics on the idea of enlarging the war, and particularly those countries in which political parties share power have to be sure "the political stars are in alignment" before they announce new commitments, Clinton told reporters before she arrived in Brussels.

The British foreign secretary, David Miliband, sketched out the threat to Europe posed by Afghanistan's instability.

"We all know that in the 1990s, Afghanistan was the incubator of international terrorism, the incubator of choice for global jihad," he said. "The badlands of the Afghan-Pakistan border are a threat to people everywhere, whatever their religion, and that's why it's very important that we make progress."

By ROBERT BURNS, The Associated Press, December 4, 2009

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is calling the Obama administration's newly announced surge-and-exit strategy in Afghanistan "the best way to protect our nation now and in the future."

In testimony she readied for a Senate panel Wednesday, Clinton also maintained that the strategy overhaul that President Barack Obama has announced was badly needed in the wake of the time and energy the U.S. has spent in recent years elsewhere - in Iraq.

Clinton said in her prepared remarks that the American focus in Afghanistan has been distracted in recent years by "the fog of another war." She said if the United States doesn't remain committed in Afghanistan, the terrorist forces that attacked this country will again have access to "the very same safe havens they used before 2001."





The Associated Press, December 2, 2009

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has requested that every House member receive a top-level briefing on President Obama's request for 30,000 additional troops in Afghanistan, according to a senior aide -- an unusual move demonstrating the high stakes of the war debate.

Obama dispatched Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to the Capitol on Wednesday to testify before a pair of House and Senate committees Wednesday. They will go before two more congressional committees Thursday.

Other key advisers, including Gen. David H. Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, and Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry, will appear before key committees early next week, with Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the Afghan war commander, appearing after that.

The armed services and foreign relations committees cover about a fifth of Congress's total membership. Pelosi wants every House member to be able to see in person a briefing from Obama's top members of the war council, the aide said.

Such a briefing would likely be held on the House floor, which is sometimes used for critical classified matters for the entire chamber to consider. Obama is likely to approve the request, with the massive briefing possibly happening as early as next week.

By Paul Kane, The Washington Post, December 2, 2009

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Congress Wednesday the Obama administration expects significant commitments of additional troops for Afghanistan from NATO allies to supplement the surge of U.S. forces. Clinton flies to Brussels Thursday for key meetings on Afghanistan at NATO headquarters.

Clinton is making no specific prediction but she does say she expects U.S. allies to be announcing significant commitments of additional troops and funding in the coming days to underscore their shared stake in the Afghan conflict.

The Secretary of State spend a full day in Congress Wednesday with other senior administration officials defending President Obama's decision to send 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan.

After another hearing Thursday, she leaves for Brussels for talks on Afghanistan Friday with fellow NATO foreign ministers, and those of other participants in the 43-nation International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, ISAF.

Clinton said she spoke with NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen between Congressional hearings and said he gave an encouraging report on his efforts to generate new troop pledges among the allies.

"We anticipate a significant commitment of additional forces by our NATO-ISAF partners, as well as additional money because of course we want to establish a robust trust fund for both the Afghan national army and the police so that the funding needs can be not only be carried out in the next couple of years, but be maintained after that," said Hillary Clinton.

NATO chief Rasmussen, the former Danish Prime Minister, said in Brussels he expected U.S. allies to send at least five thousand more soldiers to Afghanistan - and probably a few thousand more than that - to show, in his words, that this is not just America's war.

Appearing with Clinton at a House Foreign Affairs Committee Hearing, military Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen made a similar forecast, saying he is confident of at least another five thousand allied troops.

The United States now has about 70,000 troops in Afghanistan while NATO members and other allies collectively provide nearly 40,000 more. Clinton said the ratio is in line with the size of the military establishments of the United States and its allies, and shows the shared nature of the fight.

"We will have additional support from our NATO-ISAF allies," she said. "We will still be, at the end of our troop commitments, about two-to-one. But there will also be a collective presence that is very significant since it was the United States that was attacked and all these other countries under Article Five of NATO [NATO Charter], others like Australia coming in, have really seen this fight - which was picked with us - as their fight as well."

Some of the anticipated increase will include allied troops sent in to provide security for Afghanistan's August elections who will be held over indefinitely.

Official announcements are not expected until after a NATO force-generation meeting in Mons, Belgium next week though Poland has indicated it is prepared to send 600 new troops and Britain said last week it will contribute another 500.

Among other countries signaling increased commitments are Spain, Italy and Finland. Large current contributors France and Germany have held off on new pledges pending an Afghanistan conference planned for London in late January.





Voice of America, December 2, 2009

It's been nearly six months since Barack Obama stirred hearts and raised hopes across much of the Arab world with his much-promoted Cairo address. Many came away from it expecting a new and more vigorous US attempt to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Others hoped for more American sympathy and support for liberal reform in countries where free expression, women's rights and democratic elections are blocked by entrenched autocracies.

The peace process bubble burst two months ago at the United Nations, when Obama's poorly executed attempt to launch final-settlement talks between Israelis and Palestinians collapsed. Arabs who were led by Obama's rhetoric to believe thatthe United States would force Israel to make unprecedented unilateral concessions - like a complete end to all construction in Jerusalem - were bitterly disappointed.

But they are not the only victims of post-Cairo letdown. Arab reformers, who for most of this decade have been trying to break down the barriers to social and political modernization in the Middle East, have also begun to conclude that the Obama administration is more likely to harm than to help them.

"All Arab countries are craving change - and many of us believed Obama was a tool for change," says Aseel al- Awadhi, a Kuwaiti member of parliament. "Now we are losing that hope."

Awadhi, one of four women elected to Kuwait's parliament this year, is part of a movement that the Bush administration loudly promoted and sporadically attempted to help - though the effort steadily waned during George W. Bush's second term. The Obama administration, in contrast, often speaks as if it does not recognize the existence of an Arabreform movement. Bush's frequently articulated argument that political and social liberalization offer the best antidote to Islamic extremism appears absent from this administration's thinking.

"People in Jordan are beginning to understand that the United States will not play the same role as under the old administration on democracy," said Musa Maaytah, Jordan's minister of political development - who, like Awadhi, visited Washington recently for a conference sponsored by the National Endowment for Democracy. "People think that the US has many issues that for it are a priority, and they prefer to have stability in these countries more than democracy."

FOR THE reformers, a big signal came this month in a speech Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered in Marrakech, Morocco. Clinton was attending a session of the Forum for the Future, a body the Bush administration established at the height of its pro-reform campaign. The idea was to foster a dialogue between Western and Arab countries about political and social reform that would resemble the Helsinki process between the West and the Soviet bloc during the 1970s.

Clinton began her speech by referring to Obama's call in Cairo for "a new beginning between the United States and Muslim communities around the world." She then said that after consulting with "local communities" the administration had "focused on three broad areas where we believe US support can make a difference." These turned out to be "entrepreneurship," "advancing science and technology" and education.

As if citing the also-rans, Clinton added that "women's empowerment" was "a related priority" and that "the United States is committed to a comprehensive peace in the Middle East." The word "democracy" appeared nowhere in the speech, and there was no reference at all to the Arabs who are fighting to create independent newspapers, political parties or human rights organizations.

Saad Eddin Ibrahim, an Egyptian who is one of the best-known Arab reformers, was part of a group who met Clinton after the speech. He told me that he tried to point out to her that "the next two years are crucial" for determining the political direction of theMiddle East , in part because Egypt is approaching a major transition. Parliamentary elections are scheduled in 10 months, and their results will determine whether a presidential election scheduled for 2011 will be genuinely democratic. Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's 82-year-old ruler, is under pressure to retire; if he allows it, a truly competitive race to succeed him could pit his son Gamal against diplomatic heavyweights such as former foreign minister Amr Moussa and Mohamed ElBaradei, the outgoing head of the International Atomic Energy Agency - not to mention Ayman Nour, who was imprisoned for three years after challenging Mubarak in 2005.

Clinton, said Ibrahim, replied that democracy promotion had always been a centerpiece of US diplomacy and that the Obama administration would not give it up - "but that they have a lot of other things on their plate."

For Arab liberals, the translation is easy, if painful: Regardless of what the president may have said in Cairo, Obama's vision for theMiddle East doesn't include "a new beginning" in the old political order.

By Jackson Diehl, The Jerusalem Post, November 30, 2009