Petraeus reserves right to seek delay on Afghan withdrawal

General David Petraeus refused yesterday to be bound by a July 2011 deadline to begin withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan, reserving the right to seek a delay if conditions aren’t right.

The Afghan war commander said President Barack Obama’s date for the start of a limited US withdrawal was not set in stone and should be viewed more as an attempt to increase the urgency of the counter-insurgency effort.

“I think the president has been quite clear in explaining that it’s a process, not an event, and that it’s conditions-based,” General Petraeus told NBC television’s Meet the Press.

In his first major TV interview since assuming command of more than 140,000 coalition troops in Afghanistan last month, the general also said he would be prepared to negotiate with Taliban with “blood on their hands.”

General Petraeus, who helped turn around the Iraq war for Mr Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush – partly by wheeling and dealing with warring factions – said a new reconciliation and reintegration strategy aimed at persuading Afghan insurgents to change sides was “fairly imminent.”

There is “every possibility, I think, that there can be low- and mid-level reintegration and indeed some fracturing of the senior leadership that could be really defined as reconciliation.”

In a separate interview with The Washington Post, General Petraeus said 365 insurgent leaders and 2,400 rank-and-file fighters have been killed or captured over the past three months. The operations have led “some leaders of some elements” of the insurgency to begin reconciliation discussions with the Afghan government, he told the Post, characterising the interactions as “meaningful.” The four-star general told Meet the Press he has a good working relationship with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, although he admitted that “in some cases we see things a little bit differently.”

“I have literally talked to the president on average about once a day. We have had numerous conversations and a couple of those have been at his residence... walking in his garden out behind his house and so forth.”

There have been several ups-and-downs between Mr Obama’s administration and Mr Karzai, particularly over the thorny issue of corruption, but General Petraeus said the Afghan leader was only too aware of this and was taking action.

“If you look at the number of individuals who have been either fired or arrested and tried for corruption, it is a very growing list and there are some others that are pending as well.”

General Petraeus formally took over command of the Afghan war in July after Mr Obama dismissed General Stanley McChrystal when he and his staff made disparaging comments about senior US administration figures.

His interview comes as American public support for the war and Mr Obama’s handling of it are at an all-time low with the death toll for US troops hitting a record high in July of 66.

US reinforcements are trying to drive back Taliban insurgents in the south with the last units of a 30,000-strong surge of troops due to swell American numbers to 100,000 in the coming weeks.