Kabul, December 09 (Saba) - US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has affirmed the success of the Obama administration's combat strategy in Afghanistan and said the US combat troops' withdrawal from that country is possible by 2014, according to Qatar News Agency (QNA).

Addressing a news conference here with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul, Gates said,: "As I return to Washington, the United States government will be finishing work on an evaluation off the situation here. I will go back convinced that our strategy is working and that we will be able to achieve key goals laid out by President Obama last year, further embraced by other NATO heads of state in Lisbon."

US President Obama has told the Afghanistan government the US will hand over security control to Afghan forces in July 2011.

At the Lisbon summit last month, leaders of NATO endorsed President Karzai s call for the transition to be completed by the end of 2014.

Gates insisted US Marines have reversed Taliban gains in a tough southern Afghanistan battlefield.

For his part, Karzai lauded the US-led coalition troops' plan transferring power to the local forces and stressed however his country's need to more combat equipment and training to make the Afghani army a viable institution.

Meanwhile Gen. Richard Milles, the commander of the US marines in Afghanistan has confirmed that the power transfer process would be handed over to the afghans within a few months.

Gates, speaking at the Camp Leatherneck US base in Helmand Province, said that the Marines had made a huge difference since arriving in the region in the summer of 2009, when an extra 30,000 troops were deployed on the orders of President Obama.
He said while the nine-year insurgency had not been defeated, progress had exceeded his expectations.

The total US force has been pushed up to about 100,000, easily the largest component of the 150,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan.



Saba