Biden meets with Karzai in Afghanistan

Vice President-elect Biden on Saturday met in Afghanistan
with President Hamid Karzai and the head of NATO-led forces there, as U.S. military
leaders are trying to stabilize the increasingly volatile country.

The U.S. has sent almost half of the 65,000 NATO troops
stationed in the war-ravaged country, and is expected to commit another 30,000
troops to help stifle a surge in violence. President-elect Obama has stressed
that he believes more troops are needed in Afghanistan and his incoming
administration is preparing to make the
country the focus of its foreign policy.

{mosads}The Pentagon needs to free up troops from Iraq to be able
to beef up the ranks in Afghanistan, where the situation has worsened.

But military officials are still trying to find consensus
on how to withdraw troops from Iraq by 2011 as stated in a so-called status-of-forces
agreement between the U.S. and Iraq. Those decisions could be complicated by
the fact that Obama said he wanted troops out in 16 months, well before the
2011 deadline.

During his visit, Biden spoke with Karzai and with the
head of NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan, and United
Nations representative Kai Eide.

McKiernan told Biden that the new U.S. forces going into
Afghanistan will need more helicopters and support to beat back Taliban
insurgents who have caused violence to spike, especially in the southern part
of the country, according to the Associated Press.

Biden also visited the Torkham border crossing between
Afghanistan and Pakistan. The volatile border region between Afghanistan and
Pakistan has been a staging ground for Taliban and al Qaeda insurgents.

Biden is leading a
congressional delegation that also includes Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a
close ally of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). The vice president-elect’s trip to
Southwest Asia partly coincided with Gen. David Petraeus’s visit to Capitol
Hill to discuss, among other issues, the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
As head of U.S. Central Command, Petraeus has responsibility over those areas
as well as Iraq and the rest of the Middle East.