WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama and his national security team on Wednesday emerged from daylong meetings at the White House with Afghan and Pakistani leaders pledging that this week’s high-level summit would produce a new era of cooperation within the region.
But the president’s message of hope and renewed trust was diluted by a grim reminder that life in the conflict region remains perilous.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said Wednesday that dozens of civilians were killed in a U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan, an assertion that the top U.S. commander in the country later questioned.
Flanked by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Pakistani President Ali Asif Zardari and Vice President Joe Biden, Obama said, “We meet today as three sovereign nations joined by a common goal: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaida and its extremist allies in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their ability to operate in either country in the future.”
“And to achieve that goal, we must deny them the space to threaten the Pakistani, Afghan, or American people. And we must also advance security and opportunity, so that Pakistanis and Afghans can pursue the promise of a better life,” he said.Retired Gen. Jim Jones, the national security adviser, said that Obama started his closed-door bilateral meeting with Karzai, “by commenting with great sympathy on the tragedies that have happened out in western Afghanistan, and indicating that we regret the loss of life, particularly of innocent people, and that the investigations will be pursued aggressively ...”
Karzai seemed genuinely moved by Obama’s overture, Jones said.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also told the leaders that the United States “will work very hard with your governments and your leaders to avoid the loss of innocent civilian life and we deeply, deeply regret that loss.”
But by late Wednesday, the senior U.S. commander in Afghanistan told reporters the U.S. suspected that Taliban forces were responsible for at least some of those deaths to provoke an Afghan and U.S. response.
“We have some other information that leads us to distinctly different conclusions about the cause of the civilian casualties,” Gen. David McKiernan said.
Critics and editorials have said all week that the administration’s relations with both visiting presidents were tepid. But Clinton and Obama said their administration strongly supported Karzai and Zardari as democratically elected leaders.
For good measure Clinton paid an impromptu morning visit to his hotel which she said was “a personal call” to an old friend.Last week, Clinton told Congress she was skeptical of the Zardari government’s ability to confront the Taliban, which for weeks had mounted deadly offensives into new Pakistani territory.
Later, Clinton surprised reporters by appearing in the White House briefing room to update her assessment.
“Well, I’m actually quite impressed by the actions that the Pakistani government is now taking. I think that action was called for and action has been forthcoming,” she said.
“This is a long, difficult struggle. And the leadership of Pakistan, both civilian and military, really had to work on significant paradigm shifts in order to be able to see this threat as those of us on the outside perceived it. And I think that has occurred,” she said. The unified message from U.S. officials was simple: the Obama strategy of more civilian aid and warmer diplomatic relations in the region, backed by a 21,000 troop increase to Afghanistan, would work.
Obama said the summit had resulted in “unprecedented cooperation between Afghanistan and Pakistan,” as well as with the United States. Earlier in the Cabinet Room, Obama said, “We’ve had an extraordinarily productive day.”
After the president’s remarks, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, the president’s special envoy to the region, confidently said, “We turned a corner.”
Jones credited a host of new players for conducting a strategy process that involved significant consultations with leaders from both countries and other allies ranging from law enforcement to agriculture. But the entire package, Obama said, rests on successful military missions.
“U.S. troops are serving courageously and capably in a vital mission in Afghanistan alongside our Afghan and international partners. But to combat an enemy that is on the offensive, we need more troops, training and assistance. And that’s why we are deploying 21,000 troops to Afghanistan and increasing our efforts to train Afghan security forces — and I’m also pleased that our NATO allies and partners are providing resources to support our strategy. And that is why we are helping Pakistan combat the insurgency within its borders — including $400 million in immediate assistance that we are seeking from Congress, which will help the government as it steps up its efforts against the extremists.”
That new money is mostly for counterinsurgency operations includes, the Christian Science Monitor reported, equipment and training for Pakistani security forces.
