WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama said Tuesday his decision on the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan will be made in "the coming weeks."
While military and security decisions will be an important element in that strategy, Obama said, "another element is making sure we're doing a good job in building capacity on the civilian side."
The Obama administration is in the midst of an intensely debated review over how to overhaul its approach to the Afghan conflict. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, is believed to have presented Obama with a range of options, from adding as few as 10,000 troops to the general's strong preference, as many as 40,000.
Obama has held four meetings of top-level meetings with key administration officials. A fifth meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, and a sixth will be next week.
Though he gave no indication of what he will decide, Obama said the U.S. mission in Afghanistan has not changed.
"Our principal goal remains root out al-Qaida and its extremist allies that can launch attacks against the United States or its allies," he said.
A senior administration official told reporters last week that Obama will determine how many more troops to deploy to Afghanistan based only on keeping al-Qaida at bay.
A focus on al-Qaida is the driving force behind an approach being advocated by Vice-President Joe Biden as an alternative to the McChrystal recommendation for a fuller counterinsurgency effort inside Afghanistan.
Biden has argued for keeping the American force there around the 68,000 already authorized, including the 21,000 extra troops Obama already ordered this year, but significantly increasing the use of unmanned Predator drones and special forces for the kind of surgical anti-terror strikes that have been successful in Pakistan, Somalia and elsewhere.
Also Tuesday, the White House rejected reports that the president authorized 13,000 additional troops that were now arriving in Afghanistan. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the troops were part of a deployment ordered by the former Bush administration that had not made their way to the Afghan theatre by the time Obama took over the presidency.
