Obama to meet with Afghan president in March
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani will visit Washington to meet with President Obama in late March, the White House said on Friday.
He and Chief Executive Officer Abdullah Abdullah will come to the White House on March 24 to “discuss a range of issues including security, economic development, and U.S. support to the Afghan-led reconciliation process,” the White House said.
The Afghan delegation will also join Secretary of State John Kerry at Camp David for additional meetings. White House press secretary Josh Earnest said that though there was no current plan for Obama to travel to Camp David for those meetings, the administration felt that the setting would limit distractions for the participants.
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) also invited Ghani to address a joint meeting of Congress, while he is in Washington.
“This address presents an important opportunity to hear from the newly-elected President on how the United States can continue to work together to promote our shared goals and reaffirms our commitment to the Afghan people,” Boehner said in a statement.
Ghani has reportedly said that he does not want the U.S. to continue drawing down its presence in Afghanistan during 2015.
“His request with us is leave it flat for the rest of the year,” Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) said Thursday. “He said that will give us the best chance of being able to further develop and be able to defend ourselves.”
The administration is currently planning to reduce the roughly 10,000 troops in Afghanistan by about half before the end of the year.
But new Secretary of Defense Ash Carter has indicated that the U.S. might be reconsidering that timetable.
“Our priority now is to make sure this progress sticks,” Carter said on Saturday. “We are discussing and rethinking the details of the counterterrorism mission and how the environment has changed here with respect to terrorism, since we first laid out our plans.”
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