WASHINGTON: Hours after deadly terror attacks killed scores of people in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the White House assured the world on Wednesday that it had no plans to quit the region.

Recent reports in the international media had suggested that a rapid increase in attacks on US and Nato forces in Afghanistan might force the United States to leave that country.

President Barack Obama has held a series of meetings with his top advisers on Afghanistan and Pakistan on how to best confront Taliban and Al Qaeda militants threatening the governments of both countries. The sixth of those meetings was held on Monday. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who flew to Pakistan on Tuesday, also attended the meeting.

Media reports speculated that the consultations might lead to the announcement of a timeline for withdrawing US troops from the war ravaged country.

But the White House said that the United States was staying put.

‘The president (Barack Obama) began the meetings on the assessment with saying we were not leaving Afghanistan,’ White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told a briefing in Washington.

‘We understand that we have a role to play in ensuring stability in the region, which is why the president isa taking his time to get this policy right.’

On Monday, President Obama said that he would not be rushed into a decision on sending in more troops, despite Republican criticism that he was dithering.

America’s top military commander in Afghanistan, Gen Stanley McChrystal, has urged Mr Obama to send up to 40,000 more troops to confront a Taliban insurgency.

But some top Democratic lawmakers want a much smaller increase in troops.

On Friday, President Obama will meet US military chiefs as he nears the end of his review of the military strategy in Afghanistan. Spokesman Gibbs told journalists that the meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff would be among the last events in the decision making process.

Asked what the US president planned to discuss with his top military commanders on Friday, Mr Gibbs said: ‘This is a meeting requested by the president to see the Joint Chiefs and to have a chance to talk to them and to other service branches about the ongoing assessment in Afghanistan and Pakistan.’

Asked how this month’s high casualty figures weighed on the president, Mr Gibbs said: ‘The hardest task that he has on any given day is signing the condolence letter of a loved one who’s lost a son or a daughter or a husband, a wife in Iraq or Afghanistan or serving our country overseas.’

This, however, did not mean that President Obama was thinking to quit Afghanistan, he added.

Meanwhile, the US media quoted senior officials as saying that the White House was settling on an Afghan strategy that would send more US troops to protect top population centres.

The New York Times interpreted this as ‘recognising that the insurgency cannot be completely eradicated from the country’.

The media described the new strategy as a blend of rival proposals put forward by Vice-President Joe Biden and by Gen McChrystal.

The strategy would focus US forces on some 10 major population centres in Afghanistan, while in the rest of the country surveillance drones and local informants would guide US attacks on the insurgents.

Gen McChrystal also wants US and Nato troops to protect fertile valleys and economic belts, as well as major roadways. The general would send the first two combat brigades to the south, one to Kandahar. A third would go to eastern Afghanistan and a fourth would be used flexibly across the nation, said the military officer.

A US combat brigade consists of about 4,500 troops.

Vice-President Biden, however, opposed a major troop build-up and instead called for narrowing the mission on fighting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan with drones and special operations forces.

‘At the heart of the strategy is the conclusion that the United States cannot completely eradicate the insurgency in a nation where the Taliban is an indigenous force, nor does it need to in order to protect American national security,’ the NYT commented.

‘Instead, the focus would be on preventing Al Qaeda from returning in force while containing and weakening the Taliban long enough to build Afghan security forces that would eventually take over the mission.