Afghan President Hamid Karzai and President Barack Obama discussed the new US policy for Afghanistan during an hourlong videoconference call Tuesday morning, a spokesman for the presidential palace said. The videoconference came ahead of Obama's planned speech Tuesday night at the US Military Academy at West Point, New York, where he will outline a new US war plan and dispatch between 30,000 and 35,000 more American troops to Afghanistan. Karzai's office said the two leaders discussed in detail the security, political, military and economic aspects of the strategy. The palace did not provide details, but a close confidant of Karzai's who was with the president following the call said Karzai was happy with the conversation. The confidant spoke anonymously because it was a private discussion. The call was one of several Obama was making to world leaders, including Asif Ali Zardari, the president of neighboring Pakistan. Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen said he spoke with Obama over the phone Monday and Obama informed him about his Afghanistan decisions. Loekke Rasmussen would not go into details, but said that the Obama plan should make it easier for international forces to pull out at some point. “It will be offensive and it will send a strong signal that the international community's commitment to take care of Afghanistan in such a way that we forward the probability that we will not have a lifelong physical presence in Afghanistan,” he said at his weekly news conference. Obama's war escalation includes sending more American forces into Afghanistan in a graduated deployment over the next year. They will join the 71,000 US troops already on the ground. Obama's new war strategy also includes renewed focus on training Afghan forces to take over the fight and allow the Americans to leave. Obama also is expected to explain why he believes the US must continue to fight more than eight years after the war was started following the Sept. 11 attacks by Al-Qaeda terrorists based in Afghanistan. This has been the deadliest year of the conflict for US forces, with nearly 300 killed. Casualties started climbing soon after Obama decided to deploy an additional 21,000 U.S. troops as part of his plan to refocus on the Afghan war. NATO forces have also posted a higher death toll in 2009 than in any previous year, with more than 500 killed. In the latest casualty, a British service member was killed by a bomb Monday, the international military coalition said in a statement. The top UN official in Afghanistan said that Obama needs to be careful not to go too far in stressing the need for US troops to find a way out, when some sort of long-term commitment will be essential. “It would be wrong to talk about an exit strategy. I think we're talking a transition strategy, which is something completely different,” Eide said. “It really means pushing more and more responsibility onto the Afghan authorities.” Obama will emphasize that Afghan security forces need more time, more schooling and more US combat backup to be up to the job on their own, and he will make tougher demands on the governments of Pakistan as well as Afghanistan. In the capital of Kabul, some Afghans said they were worried that the troop increase was too like an occupation - a scenario particularly worrisome to Afghans who still remember living through an oppressive Soviet regime. “It is possible to build a county with its own people, not with foreigners,” said Nazir Ahamd, standing outside of a clothing store that he runs.
