Obama Afghan plan focuses on Pakistan aid'

NEW YORK:President Barack Obama's plan for Afghanistan includes proposals to shift more American efforts toward problems in neighbouring Pakistan and to seek some kind of political reconciliation with the vast majority of insurgents in the region, according to The New York Times on Friday.

Citing administration officials, the newspaper said the plan reflects in part a conclusion within the administration that most of the insurgent foot soldiers in Afghanistan and Pakistan are "reconcilable" and can be pried away from the hard-core organisations of the Taliban and al Qaeda.

At least 70 per cent of the insurgents, and possibly more, can be encouraged to lay down their arms with the proper incentives, they said. A strategic review nearing completion is being carried out by a team of high-ranking administration officials whose recommendations will be subject to Obama's approval. After seven years of a United States-led war effort in Afghanistan, officials involved in the review claim that the military to date has succeeded primarily in driving the most hard-core Taliban and other extremist militants out of Afghanistan and into western Pakistan.

To put more pressure on those Pakistani sanctuaries, the dispatch cited United States and Pakistani officials as saying they expected the plan to recommend at least a continuation of what amounts to a covert war carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency inside Pakistan, using drone aircraft for missile strikes on insurgent hide-outs. The plan will also call for an increase in military and financial aid to Pakistan, though there was still a debate on just how much additional aid should be provided, the dispatch said. One senior Obama official was cited as saying the military aid to Pakistan would be aimed at trying to get its army to focus more on counterinsurgency and less on its long-running feud with India.