American President Barack Obama will Tuesday announce a swift six-month surge of 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, but also define an "end-game" to the grueling eight-year war, officials said.
Obama will unveil a political and military gamble aimed at challenging the Taliban, destroying al-Qaeda and training the Afghan army in a globally awaited speech, after an exhaustive months-long policy review.
This will not be nation building. This is not an open-ended commitment, what we are doing is putting forward a comprehensive strategy and an end-game in Afghanistan
While announcing he will pitch 30,000 more troops into the fight, Obama will set a "back-end" for their deployment, to signal the U.S. mission will not be a "decade-long" operation, a U.S. official told AFP.
Obama, following a protracted and sometimes divisive policy review, had decided that plans for a slower ramp up of extra U.S. troops would not work given deteriorating security conditions in Afghanistan, the official said.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs meanwhile said Obama would "absolutely" spell out for Americans how and when they could expect to see U.S. forces finally come home from a war launched after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.
"This will not be nation building. This is not an open-ended commitment, what we are doing is putting forward a comprehensive strategy and an end-game in Afghanistan," Gibbs told MSNBC.
In the speech at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point at 8:00 p.m. (0100 GMT Wednesday), Obama needs to convince skeptics fearing a Vietnam-style quagmire that an escalation will paradoxically lead to withdrawal.
Sliding support
Opinion polls show sliding public support for the war, with more than 900 American soldiers killed in Afghanistan and October the deadliest month yet with 74 U.S. combat deaths. Many more foreign troops and Afghans have died.
Hours before heading to West Point, Obama laid out his new strategy in an hour-long video conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, officials in Kabul and Washington said.
A U.S. official would not go into detail about the discussions, but Obama aides have said the president will set clear expectations for the Afghan government in improving security and cracking down on corruption.
Obama was also due to lay out his plans to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, after briefing Russia, France and Britain on Monday, with calls also scheduled with the German and Chinese leaders.
The president has spent months wrestling with a decision some backers fear could sink the promise of a reforming presidency.
Some of Obama's Democratic allies in Congress are resisting more troops, citing a lack of clarity in war aims and the huge cost of deployments at a time of deep economic crisis.
Already on Tuesday, lawmakers opposed to an escalation scheduled a press conference in protest at the troop surge plan.
Pakistan strategy
Obama's speech, which will also freshen U.S. strategy of Pakistan, will be closely watched by foreign governments weighing U.S. intent and Obama is also expected to ask NATO partners for more troops.
In a first sign of increased allied help, NATO ally Britain said Monday it would this month send 500 more soldiers to boost its Afghan contingent to 9,500 men and women.
NATO allies France and Germany are also thought to be under pressure to add more troops.
Obama's policy review came to the boil after Afghan commander General Stanley McChrystal reported on the war to the Pentagon in August.
The Washington Post then revealed that the general had warned the war "will likely result in failure" without more troops to crush the insurgency.
Obama's task was further complicated by the corruption-tainted Afghan election, which fanned deep doubts about President Hamid Karzai.
Some administration officials, notably Vice President Joseph Biden, supported a more limited effort to pursue Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
While he will reveal his hand to the American people on Tuesday, Obama signed orders implementing the strategy on Sunday.
He then spoke directly by secure video-link to McChrystal and U.S. ambassador to Kabul Karl Eikenberry.
France & Germany rejection
Meanwhile France and Germany refused U.S. requests to immediately promise more troops for Afghanistan, frustrating Obama's hopes that allies would match his troop surge.
Britain has already offered an extra 500 troops and Italy has said it will send an unspecified number but Poland and other contributors are among those waiting to see what happens in Afghanistan.
A French minister said Tuesday that President Nicolas Sarkozy had refused a U.S. request for more troops. But Le Monde newspaper quoted a Sarkozy aide as saying that France was weighing the request and could agree to boost its presence as long as the fresh troops focus on training Afghan forces.
"You know the president's answer, it's 'no'," Pierre Lellouche, the minister for Europe and a former envoy to Afghanistan, said in a French television interview. Sarkozy said last week that no more French troops would go to Afghanistan.
Le Monde reported that Obama was seeking 1,500 extra French troops for Afghanistan, on top of the 3,400 already there. It quoted a member of Sarkozy's staff as saying France would wait to see what happens at a conference on Afghanistan in London on Jan. 28.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said her country would also wait until after the London meeting.
"We are expecting requests from the United States but we will not take a decision in the coming days, we will do so after the conference on Afghanistan,"
"We are expecting requests from the United States but we will not take a decision in the coming days, we will do so after the conference on Afghanistan," Merkel said after talks in Berlin with Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.
"After this conference on Afghanistan, Germany will decide whether or not it will make fresh efforts, and if so, what efforts," Merkel said, adding that security in Afghanistan would not be solved by military means alone.
Brown set three conditions for Britain sending extra troops to Afghanistan.
These were that the Afghan government show a commitment to providing police and soldiers who can be trained to engage in combat; that British troops are properly equipped and that other NATO countries also boost force levels.
Poland will decide within a month whether to beef-up its contingent of 2,2D0 troops in Afghanistan by up to a thousand new soldiers, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Tuesday.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd pledged Monday to send more police trainers and civilian aid experts to Afghanistan, saying his country was in it "for the long haul."
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