Brussels: US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has given some hints to end a decade of war in Afghanistan and said that the United States plans to end its combat mission in Afghanistan in 2013 and shift to a training role, one year before most US troops are due to withdraw.
Panetta said this while talking to reporters aboard his plane en route to a Nato meeting in Brussels.
He said that hopefully by the mid-to-latter part of 2013, the US to make a transition from a combat role to a train, advise and assist role.
Panetta further said that president Obama took a similar approach in Iraq before the pullout there, declaring an end to the combat mission while the Pentagon renamed units as “advise and assist” brigades.
Despite the goal of ending the combat mission next year, the United States had no plans to move up the 2014 deadline for the withdrawal of American and coalition forces, Panetta said.
The Nato alliance had agreed on the 2014 timeline “and I think we ought to stick with that,” he said.
He said 2013 would be a “crucial” year for the final transfer of remaining areas to Afghan security forces and “2014 becomes a year of consolidating the transition.”
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