Carter signals slower US withdrawal from Afghanistan

US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter told reporters in Kabul on Saturday that while no decisions had been made, President Barack Obama was open to the idea of slowing down its drawdown of American soldiers from the country, as requested by the new Afghan president.

"That could mean taking another look at the timing and sequencing of base closures to ensure we have the right array of coalition capabilities," Carter told a joint news conference with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. He said a decision could be expected some time after Obama hosts Ghani at the White House next month.

Carter also said the main reason for the Obama administration's new thinking was Afghanistan's new unity government under President Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, something he said promised to lead to more effective cooperation between Washington and Kabul.

"That's a major change that just a few months ago we couldn't have planned on," Carter said.

US officials became frustrated with Ghani's predecessor, Hamid Karzai, who in his later years in office sometimes publicly criticized American troops and refused to sign a security pact to allow them to remain in the country beyond 2014 - something Ghani did on his first day in office last September.

Current US military planning would see the number of American troops in Afghanistan cut from the current 10,000 to 5,000 by the end of this year, with almost all of the rest to leave by the end of 2016.

In his remarks to reporters, Ghani thanked Obama for showing a willingness to adjust the timing of the withdrawal to take into consideration "the realities on the ground." Ghani has repeatedly asked US officials to consider slowing the pace of the troop drawdown.

Seeking peace with the Taliban

Since taking office, Ghani has made trying to launch peace talks with Islamist Taliban militants one of his top priorities. However, at the press conference he declined to say whether the Taliban were now ready to open talks with his government.

"The grounds for peace have never been better in the last 36 years," he said, before adding that "we cannot make premature announcements."

This assessment, though, appeared to be in sharp contrast with the situation on the ground, just days after the United Nations released a report showing that 2014 was the deadliest in Afghanistan in five years.

Carter, who was making his first foreign trip since being sworn in as defense secretary on Tuesday also met with the top US commander in Afghanistan, General John Campbell, as well as and General Lloyd Austin, the commander of US Central Command.

pfd/bk (AFP, AP, Reuters)