Obama meets NATO chief, discusses Afghan transition

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Obama meets NATO chief, discusses Afghan transition

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Barack Obama met NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen to discuss Afghan transition.

08 November,2011 12:37 pm

US President Barack Obama on Monday met NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen, and the two men discussed how next years alliance summit in Chicago would shape a planned withdrawal from Afghanistan.Obama and Rasmussen spoke in the Oval Office in a meeting opened briefly to still photographers but closed to reporters, and the White House said the two men also reviewed NATOs Libya operation.The White House said that Obama and Rasmussen discussed the NATO summit in May next year, which the president will host in his adoptive hometown of Chicago, and the need to broaden alliance ties with non partner nations.Additionally, the President and the Secretary General discussed the important progress made by the NATO-led ISAF mission in Afghanistan, a White House statement said.It said the talks also centered on how the Chicago Summit might shape the next major phase of transition in Afghanistan, consistent with the Lisbon Summit goals and the Presidents June 22 speech on Afghanistan.At the NATO summit in Lisbon last year, the alliance agreed a plan to bring all troops home from Afghan battlefields by 2014 after transitioning security responsibility to Afghan forces.Last June, Obama ordered all 33,000 US surge troops home from Afghanistan by the middle of 2012 and declared the beginning of the end of the war, vowing to turn to nation building at home.And just last week, it emerged that Obamas advisers were debating a shift in military policy in Afghanistan that would scale back the militarys mission and focus on advising Afghan forces much earlier than planned.