Slight shift in Obama's Pakistan stance

Obama called for at least two more brigades to be sent to Afghanistan. “Now is the time for us to do it. I think it’s important for us to begin planning for those brigades now,” he said.

Obama said Washington needed to take a regional approach to the problem, particularly by engaging Islamabad regarding what he described as a “growing” number of extremist training camps in Pakistan near the Afghan border.

“I think that what we’d like to see is the Pakistani government take out those training camps,” he said. In Kabul, Obama met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has been criticised by the Illinois senator for not doing enough to rebuild his war-torn country.

The meeting, which lasted nearly two hours and included lunch at the Presidential Palace in Kabul, covered a range of issues including terrorism and Afghanistan’s vast narcotics trade, Karzai’s spokesman said.

“The discussions were focused on the significant progress that we’ve made but also on the unmet challenges that we still have ahead of us,” Homayun Hamidzada told reporters as Obama and his party headed to the airport.

“The discussions also focused on the difficulties we’re facing, the difficult challenges in the fight against corruption, counter-narcotics and also the continuing threat of terrorism and fundamentalism,” he said.