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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.

The article reports that U.S. President Barack Obama is firm about his decision regarding the withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Afghanistan.

The article reports on the intentions of the U.S. President Barack Obama to establish friendly relations with Afghanistan.

The article reports on the decision of U.S. President Barack Obama to remove American troops in Afghanistan in 2013 which was viewed as a careful act of balancing military and political interests.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- President Obama, speaking to an American television audience on Tuesday night from Bagram Air Base, declared that he had traveled here to herald a new era in the relationship between the United States and Afghanistan, ''a future in which war ends, and a new chapter begins.'' Mr. Obama's address, during an unannounced visit to sign a strategic partnership agreement with President Hamid Karzai that sets the terms for relations after the departure of American troops in 2014, was a chance for him to make an election-year case that he is winding down a costly and increasingly unpopular war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WASHINGTON -- Seeking to project a united front on Afghanistan after a spate of bloody setbacks on the battlefield, President Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain pledged on Wednesday that their countries would stick to the timetable for winding down the war by the end of 2014. While acknowledging the complications posed by the recent massacre of 16 Afghans, apparently by a lone American soldier, and the loss of 6 British soldiers to a roadside bomb, Mr. Obama and Mr. Cameron insisted that the American-led coalition was making gains in preparing Afghans to take over their own security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WASHINGTON -- President Obama pledged on Tuesday that a thorough investigation would be conducted into the bloody rampage by an American soldier in Afghanistan. ''The United States takes this as seriously as if this was our own citizens and our own children who were murdered,'' Mr. Obama said, in his first public remarks since the shooting took place on Sunday. He said he was ''heartbroken by the loss of innocent life,'' calling it outrageous and unacceptable. ''It's not who we are as a country, and it does not represent our military,'' he added. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WASHINGTON -- The killing of two American servicemen and the eruption of deadly anti-American protests in Afghanistan confronts President Obama with a potential political weakness in a foreign policy that has so far offered few easy targets to Republican candidates eager for an opening. But the White House and the Obama campaign believe that, if anything, the bloodshed in Afghanistan will reinforce the sentiments of a large majority of Americans who want to get the troops out of there as soon as possible. This, the president's aides said, will constrain Mitt Romney or other Republicans seeking to benefit from a perception that Mr. Obama's Afghan strategy has gone awry. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WASHINGTON -- It did not take long for Mitt Romney to pounce on Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta's statement Wednesday that American troops could end their combat role in Afghanistan by mid-2013, 18 months sooner than expected. Within hours, Mr. Romney lambasted it as ''naive'' and ''misguided.'' But President Obama, far from disavowing the Pentagon chief, seems eager to debate his Republican critics about a withdrawal timetable that his advisers contend is strategically sound, and which also happens to be politically popular. The White House said that Mr. Panetta's remarks reflected the president's resolve, supported by his experience in Iraq, not to wage a ''war without end'' in Afghanistan. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the anguished White House debates over the war in Afghanistan, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. argued consistently to stress counterterrorism over the more costly strategy of nation-building. It turns out, though, that Mr. Biden warned against the most sensational counterterrorism operation of the Obama presidency: the commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden. In a speech last weekend to House Democrats at their annual retreat in Cambridge, Md., Mr. Biden said he had advised President Obama not to go ahead with the raid on the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, arguing that the military needed more time to make sure Bin Laden was in the complex. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WASHINGTON -- As President Obama began mulling his next big decision on troop levels in Afghanistan last January, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. quietly flew to Kabul to meet with President Hamid Karzai and tour the battlefield with the top American commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus. At a military base in Wardak Province, where the Taliban continue to pose a security threat, Mr. Biden listened with bewilderment as an American civilian told him about plans to dig a well in a nearby village. ''Why do they need a well?'' he asked, according to a person who was there. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WASHINGTON -- President Obama declared Wednesday that the United States had largely achieved its goals in Afghanistan, setting in motion a substantial withdrawal of American troops in an acknowledgment of the shifting threat in the region and the fast-changing political and economic landscape in a war-weary America. Asserting that the country that served as a base for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks no longer represented a terrorist threat to the United States, Mr. Obama declared that the ''tide of war is receding.'' And in a blunt recognition of domestic economic strains, he said, ''America, it is time to focus on nation-building here at home.'' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WASHINGTON -- President Obama plans to announce his decision on the scale and pace of troop withdrawals from Afghanistan in a speech on Wednesday evening, an administration official said Monday. As he closes in on a decision, another official said, Mr. Obama is considering options that range from a Pentagon-backed proposal to pull out only 5,000 troops this year to an aggressive plan to withdraw within 12 months all 30,000 troops the United States deployed to Afghanistan as part of the surge in December 2009. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WASHINGTON -- As the Obama administration nears a crucial decision on how rapidly to withdraw combat forces from Afghanistan, high-ranking officials say that Al Qaeda's original network in the region has been crippled, providing a rationale for an accelerated reduction of troops. The officials said the intense campaign of drone strikes and other covert operations in Pakistan -- most dramatically the raid that killed Osama bin Laden -- had left Al Qaeda paralyzed, with its leaders either dead or pinned down in the frontier area near Afghanistan. Of 30 prominent members of the terrorist organization in the region identified by intelligence agencies as targets, 20 have been killed in the last year and a half, they said, reducing the threat they pose. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WASHINGTON -- The killing of Osama bin Laden deep in Pakistan is sure to fuel the debate over the Obama administration's strategy in Afghanistan, where 100,000 troops are still fighting a war to destroy Al Qaeda. And the raid, conducted without the cooperation or even advance knowledge of Pakistan, raised fresh doubts about the lengthy American effort to turn it into a trustworthy partner in the hunt for terrorists. As President Obama approaches a critical period in deciding how many troops to pull out of Afghanistan -- and how fast -- the deadly raid on Al Qaeda's leader called into question many of the administration's basic assumptions about how to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for Islamic terrorists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WASHINGTON -- With roadside bombs by far the leading killer of American troops in Afghanistan, the Obama administration has started a worldwide effort to stop the flow of ammonium nitrate, the fertilizer that is their basic ingredient, into the war ravaged country. But the campaign, dubbed Operation Global Shield, is running up against stubborn hurdles in neighboring Pakistan, where the police routinely wave tons of ammonium nitrate shipments across the border into Afghanistan despite that country's ban on imports of the chemical. It is unclear whether the border guards are fooled by clever attempts to disguise the shipments as benign or are paid to turn a blind eye, or both. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WASHINGTON -- The new American military commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, is pushing to have top leaders of a feared insurgent group designated as terrorists, a move that could complicate an eventual Afghan political settlement with the Taliban and aggravate political tensions in the region. General Petraeus introduced the idea of blacklisting the group, known as the Haqqani network, late last week in discussions with President Obama's senior advisers on Pakistan and Afghanistan, according to several administration officials, who said it was being seriously considered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WASHINGTON -- The messy departure of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal is likely to make the Obama administration's internal debates over Afghanistan even more pointed, giving the military a powerful advocate for staying the course as it prepares for a reckoning with more impatient officials like Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. President Obama insisted he was switching military leaders, not strategies, when he fired General McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, on Wednesday. But administration insiders acknowledge that there have been preliminary discussions about whether to rethink the approach to a war that is clearly bogging down. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WASHINGTON -- Six months after President Obama decided to send more forces to Afghanistan, the halting progress in the war has crystallized longstanding tensions within the government over the viability of his plan to turn around the country and begin pulling out by July 2011. Within the administration, the troubles in clearing out the Taliban from a second-tier region and the elusive loyalties of the Afghan president have prompted anxious discussions about whether the policy can work on the timetable the president has set. Even before the recent setbacks, the military was highly skeptical of setting a date to start withdrawing, but Mr. Obama insisted on it as a way to bring to conclusion a war now in its ninth year. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WASHINGTON -- After more than a year of watching America's ability to influence President Hamid Karzai ebb, Obama administration officials now admit privately that the tough-love approach Mr. Obama adopted when he came to power may have been a big mistake. The difference in approach was evident in two recent scenes on Air Force One. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WASHINGTON -- Seeking to quell an increasingly vitriolic and public dispute, the Obama administration said Wednesday that President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan was ''a figure that we respect,'' and it sharply countered claims by a former United Nations official that the president might be a drug user. The State Department spokesman, Philip J. Crowley, defended Mr. Karzai after a turbulent week in which the Afghan president accused the West of manipulating Afghanistan's elections and was quoted as threatening to join the Taliban if the United States did not stop pressuring him -- all in the wake of a visit to Kabul by President Obama. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

KABUL, Afghanistan -- This month, with President Hamid Karzai looking ahead to a visit to the White House, he received a terse note from aides to President Obama: Your invitation has been revoked. The reason, according to American officials, was Mr. Karzai's announcement that he was emasculating an independent panel that had discovered widespread fraud in Mr. Karzai's re-election last year. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WASHINGTON -- With American troops pouring into insurgent strongholds in Afghanistan and the United States succeeding in killing insurgent leaders with drone attacks in Pakistan, the Obama administration is beginning to consider whether it has gained the upper hand sufficiently to justify an effort to begin talks with the Taliban. President Obama met with his war cabinet on Friday, and the issue of reconciling with the Taliban is gaining traction, even as administration officials debate whether the time is right. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As the Obama administration pours 30,000 additional troops into Afghanistan, it has begun grappling with the next great dilemma of this long war: whether to reconcile with the men who sheltered Osama bin Laden and who still have close ties to Al Qaeda. The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, has said he wants to reach out to the leaders of the Taliban, and administration officials acknowledge privately that they are considering the idea. But they warn that the plan is rife with political risk at home and could jeopardize a widely backed effort to lure lower-ranking, more amenable Taliban fighters back into Afghan society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Obama administration's ambitious civilian push in Pakistan and Afghanistan will keep thousands of Americans in those countries for years -- rebuilding Afghan agriculture, rooting out corruption and using the local media to counter anti-American sentiment. The steps, laid out in a 30-page policy paper to be released Thursday by the State Department, are the most detailed blueprint yet for the civilian part of the administration's strategy in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

President Hamid Karzai opted for continuity over change in the list of cabinet nominees he presented to Parliament on Saturday, retaining some leaders supported by the West but also several viewed as incompetent and two accused of involvement in the fraud that tainted the recent presidential election. The naming of the cabinet nominees was the first major test of whether Mr. Karzai would make the type of bold changes President Obama was hoping for when he decided to commit an additional 30,000 troops to fight a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

President Obama sent his top diplomat, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, to Europe on Thursday to press sometimes balky NATO allies to contribute thousands of additional troops to his new strategy for turning the tide in the Afghanistan war. Mrs. Clinton acknowledged that some countries were confused by Mr. Obama's plan to begin bringing home American troops in July 2011. But she said that, over all, ''The response has been positive,'' and that she would work to clear up doubts over the American timetable. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It is far from clear that President Obama can depend on President Hamid Karzai to bring order to this violent country, but it is becoming clear that he will depend on Hillary Rodham Clinton to be his go-between in dealing with the mercurial Afghan leader. In a visit to Kabul, during which she held a 90-minute, one-on-one session with Mr. Karzai on Wednesday, and in an intense telephone call a few weeks ago in the aftermath of Afghanistan's election, Secretary of State Clinton has built an unlikely rapport with the Afghan leader, according to administration officials. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

President Obama sent his top diplomat to Afghanistan on Wednesday to press President Hamid Karzai to deliver ''measurable results'' on governance and corruption as the White House prepared specific new demands to accompany an American troop buildup. In an unannounced visit to Kabul, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned Mr. Karzai privately that future civilian aid would depend in part on how his government performed in areas like developing an effective army and curbing cronyism, according to an American official. Publicly, she told reporters that Mr. Karzai had begun to tackle corruption but ''not nearly enough.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

President Obama hopes to combine the best elements from among the several proposals he is studying on sending additional troops to Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said on Thursday. ''I would say it was more, how can we combine some of the best features of several of the options to maximum good effect?'' Mr. Gates told reporters.. ''So there is a little more work to do, but I think we're getting toward the end of the process.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

When President Obama named two marquee diplomats as his special emissaries to the Middle East and to Afghanistan and Pakistan last January, many here wondered whether they would eclipse Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Nine months later, the two envoys, Richard C. Holbrooke and George J. Mitchell, are the ones fighting to stay in the limelight. For reasons having to do with personality clashes, deteriorating conditions on the ground and the sheer difficulty of reconciling old enemies, Mr. Holbrooke and Mr. Mitchell are both struggling with their portfolios, widely acknowledged to be the most treacherous in American foreign policy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Obama administration has told the government of Hamid Karzai that it believes he will be re-elected as president of Afghanistan for another five-year term, two administration officials said Sunday, even though the results from the disputed Aug. 20 vote are still under review because of evidence of widespread fraud. The United States and other NATO countries also told Mr. Karzai's government that they have pledged to help him wage an expanded campaign to peel away insurgent fighters from the Taliban, these officials said. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

For President Obama, the handshakes and hugs during his first visit to the United Nations last week masked a cold reality: nine months into his presidency, he is being forced to retool his most important foreign policy initiatives, from the war in Afghanistan to peace in the Middle East and his diplomatic overture to Iran. Mr. Obama's efforts to reach out to adversaries and break political deadlocks are running up against old enmities, insoluble differences and foreign leaders who simply do not see eye to eye with the president. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

How do you persuade America's allies to stick with the plan in Afghanistan when the strategy itself is being reconsidered -- for the second time in six months? That is one of President Obama's primary challenges this week in New York as he tries for the first time to use his popularity around the world and his skills of persuasion at the United Nations -- friendly but unfamiliar territory -- to urge nervous allies to stick with what a month ago he called a ''war of necessity.'' [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]

The Obama administration is stepping up pressure on Pakistan to expand and reorient its fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, warning that failing to do so would undercut the new strategy and troop increase for Afghanistan that President Obama is preparing to approve, American officials say. While Afghanistan has dominated the public discussion of Mr. Obama's strategy, which officials say could be announced as early as this week, Pakistan is returning to center stage in administration planning. As the president traveled to Asia, his national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, was quietly sent to Islamabad, its capital. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article is by Helene Cooper, Thom Shanker and Dexter Filkins. WASHINGTON -- President Obama's top commander in Afghanistan flew to Washington on Tuesday to find out whether he would be fired for remarks he and members of his staff made that were contemptuous of senior administration officials, laying bare the disarray and enmity in a foreign-policy team that is struggling with the war. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the nation's top military officer on Wednesday laid out a muscular defense of President Obama's decision to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, but they made clear that his plan to begin withdrawing those forces by July 2011 was flexible. At two hearings on Capitol Hill, where they faced deep skepticism about different parts of Mr. Obama's war plan from both parties, they also said that the arrival of the additional forces, while speedy, would not be as fast as Mr. Obama suggested in a speech to the nation on Tuesday night. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

President Obama announced Tuesday that he would speed 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan in coming months, but he vowed to start bringing American forces home in the middle of 2011, saying the United States could not afford and should not have to shoulder an open-ended commitment. Promising that he could ''bring this war to a successful conclusion,'' Mr. Obama set out a strategy that would seek to reverse Taliban gains in large parts of Afghanistan, better protect the Afghan people, increase the pressure on Afghanistan to build its own military capacity and a more effective government and step up attacks on Al Qaeda in Pakistan. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

President Obama issued orders to send about 30,000 additional American troops to Afghanistan as he prepared to address the nation Tuesday night to explain what may be one of the most defining decisions of his presidency. Mr. Obama conveyed his decision to military leaders late Sunday afternoon during a meeting in the Oval Office and then spent Monday phoning foreign counterparts, including the leaders of Britain, France and Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

President Obama said Tuesday that he was determined to ''finish the job'' in Afghanistan, and his aides signaled to allies that he would send as many as 25,000 to 30,000 additional American troops there even as they cautioned that the final number remained in flux. The White House said Mr. Obama had completed his consultations with his war council on Monday night and would formally announce his decision in a national address in the next week, probably on Tuesday. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]