The US may start withdrawing from Afghanistan in late or mid-2013, Pentagon Chief Leon Panetta said, Reuters reports.
The initiative may benefit US President Barack Obama in his upcoming presidential polls. The US plans to keep about 60,000 of its instructors in Afghanistan.
Panetta made the statement on his way to Brussels where NATO defense ministers will hold a session to discuss the peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan.
The US administration insists on keeping the withdrawal plan unchanged. Panetta’s statement caused surprise in NATO and the US because international forces in Afghanistan are to stay until 2014.
Jay Carney, press secretary of the White House, commented that the defense secretary’s statement was a rating of the official strategy for handing control over security in Afghanistan to the local military and police by 2014. Panetta meant that the process will be realized and preferably ahead of schedule, the White House official explains.
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that withdrawal from Afghanistan according to schedule would be concluded by 2014. NATO will stick to the plan developed at the summit in 2010. The statement followed a call from French President Nicolas Sarkozy to fully withdraw NATO troops ahead of schedule in 2013. Sarkozy also announced plans to withdraw French troops from Afghanistan by late 2012 after an attack on four French servicemen on January 20, 2012.
