“Hopefully by the mid-to-latter part of 2013, we’ll be able to make a transition from a combat role to a train, advise and assist role,” Panetta told reporters.
Panetta said it was expected foreign forces would be “transitioning” their role in Afghanistan as the 2014 drawdown approached. Panetta said that was “what we did in Iraq and it’s what we’re going to try to do in Afghanistan.”
Panetta made his comments on the eve of a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels and come after French President Nicolas Sarkozy met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai earlier this week and said NATO would end its mission in Afghanistan in 2013. Sarkozy said some French troops would provide training to Afghan forces after 2013, comments that echoed Panetta’s outline to reporters on Wednesday.
Panetta said he wanted to hear more from the French defense minister during Thursday and Friday’s meeting in Brussels.
Panetta described the role of U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2014 as being “pretty robust” and added the change to an advisory and training role “doesn’t mean that we’re not going to be combat-ready.”
The “Washington Post” cited an unnamed U.S. official as saying “nothing is final” and that decisions about the pace of withdrawal would not be made until a NATO summit in Chicago this May.
An early transition from a combat role also comes ahead of U.S. presidential elections in November this year and would give incumbent U.S. President Barack Obama an opportunity to say during campaigning that U.S. troops were out of Iraq and would soon be out of Afghanistan also.
compiled from agency reports
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