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The article discusses U.S. president Barack Obama's decision to withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014 given a lack of a signed bilateral security agreement (B.S.A.) with Afghan president Hamid Karzai. Topics addressed include the April 2014 presidential election in Afghanistan and the possibility that Karzai's successor will sign the agreement, as well as Obama's claim that any residual forces in Afghanistan will continue to shrink as the agreement goes unsigned.

This article is bySabrina Tavernise, Mark Landler and Helene Cooper. KABUL, Afghanistan -- President Hamid Karzai's concession of the need for a runoff election in Afghanistan appears to have prevented his country from slipping into paralysis, but has created a new landscape of risks and uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

On Monday, as the vote-counting in Afghanistan was nearing an end, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was briefed by the American ambassador in Kabul, Karl W. Eikenberry. The same day, the ambassador delivered a blunt message to the front-runner, President Hamid Karzai: ''Don't declare victory.'' The slim majority tentatively awarded Mr. Karzai in Afghanistan's fraud-scarred election has put the Obama administration in an awkward spot: trying to balance its professed determination to investigate mounting allegations of corruption and vote-rigging while not utterly alienating the man who seems likely to remain the country's leader for another five years. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Japan's landmark election presents the Obama administration with an untested government, creating a new set of imponderables for a White House already burdened by foreign policy headaches in Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea. Inside the administration, the historic change in Tokyo is raising concerns that Japan may back away from supporting key American priorities like the war in Afghanistan or the redeployment of American troops in Asia, according to senior officials. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Under heavy international pressure, President Hamid Karzai appears set to concede as early as Tuesday that he fell short of a first-round victory in the nation's disputed presidential election, but the path to ensuring that the country has credible leadership remains uncertain, American and European officials said Monday. The officials said Mr. Karzai was moving toward accepting the findings of an international audit that stripped him of nearly a third of his votes in the first round, leaving him below the 50 percent threshold that would have allowed him to avoid a runoff and declare victory over his main rival, Abdullah Abdullah. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The government of President Hamid Karzai is preparing for the likelihood that he will have to face an election runoff with his main challenger, Afghanistan's ambassador here said Thursday, acknowledging an outcome that Western diplomats had been pushing for but that could complicate the debate over whether to send more American troops. The comments by the ambassador in Washington, Said Tayeb Jawad, were the first in which Mr. Karzai's government conceded that a runoff was likely, after weeks of investigation into stark cases of election fraud. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]