Afghan war to be over by 2014 end: Obama

KABUL would end by the close of 2014, when most of foreign combat troops are scheduled to leave the country, US President Barack Obama said on Saturday.

A day after wide-ranging talks with his Afghan counterpart at the White House, Obama said in his weekly radio address: “After more than a decade of war, the nation we need to rebuild is our own.”

At a joint media appearance with President Hamid Karzai on Friday, Obama announced the acceleration of military transition in Afghanistan, saying the US forces would switch to a support role in Afghanistan by this spring.

During the radio address, Obama said he wanted to update the Americans “on how we will end this war, bring our troops home and continue the work of rebuilding America”. The US military had considerably weakened Al Qaeda and had pushed the Taliban out of their strongholds, he claimed.

“And our core objective, the reason we went to war in the first place, is now within reach: ensuring that Al Qaeda can never again use Afghanistan to launch attacks against America,” added the president.

PAN Monitor/mud

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