The US has said that it may rethink its plan to begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan by July 2011 if conditions on the ground prevent a security handover to the Afghan government.
Pressed yesterday by Republicans sceptical about fixing a timeline for withdrawal, Robert Gates, defence secretary, said that the strategy unveiled by President Barack Obama on Tuesday was narrower than past US objectives for Afghanistan and achievable within the timespan the president had set out.
Mr Obama plans to send 30,000 extra troops to the country by the summer of next year and begin a pull-out of US forces a year later.
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