WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Sunday the United States had made it clear to Pakistan that its main objective in the region was to uproot Al Qaeda.

The statement, given in a television interview, comes a day after Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani urged the United States to take Pakistan into confidence before making any decision on its Afghan policy.

Also on Sunday, senior White House adviser David Axelrod said that President Barack Obama was close to announcing his new Afghan policy and this time he’s ‘determined to get Afghanistan right’.

In a related development, The New York Times reported on Sunday that the US was spending ‘one million dollars per soldier per year in Afghanistan’, which explained why the Americans were not interested in further prolonging this war.

In an interview to ABC News, Secretary Clinton explained that the main objective of the new US policy was to eradicate Al Qaeda which, US experts believe, is based in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

‘We have made it clear to the Pakistanis, as well as to the Afghans and others, that we want to do everything we can to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda,’ she said.

Mr Axelrod, on the other hand, told CNN that President Obama had already held ‘hours and hours and hours’ of meetings with his military commanders and his national security team in order to get it (the new policy) right.

Like The New York Times, Senator Kent Conrad, a Democrat, also underlined the need to end the Afghan conflict as quickly as possible. He noted that the war in Afghanistan was costing $40 billion to $50 billion a year.

He also agreed with the US ambassador in Kabul who recently proposed not to send additional troops to Afghanistan unless the Afghan government ended corruption and improved governance.

‘It’s the wrong course for America to increase troop levels in Afghanistan,’ the senator said.

Secretary Clinton, while further explaining the new US policy, said that the United States was working on an ‘integrated strategy looking at Afghanistan and Pakistan as a theatre in which we have to operate’.

The US goal, she said, was very clear. ‘We want to get the people who attacked us, and we want to prevent them and their syndicate of terrorism from posing a threat to us, our allies and our interests.’

Meanwhile, diplomatic observers in Washington pointed out that the United States had constantly engaged with Pakistan during the consultation process that started in August and was continuing.

Last month, ISI Chief Lt-Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha visited Washington with a team of senior military officials to make Pakistan’s ‘input’ into the new US strategy for the Pak-Afghan region.

Gen Pasha left after meeting CIA Director Leon Panetta, US National Security Adviser Gen James L. Jones and US National Intelligence chief Dennis Blair, leaving his team for further talks with other US officials.

Earlier this month, the US State Department invited prominent public figures – such as Asma Jahangir – from Pakistan for consultations and Pakistani-Americans working for various US think-tanks were also included in these talks.

Meanwhile, US experts on South Asia believe that the new policy would advocate increasing US engagement with Pakistan, sending in more American trainers and advisers and would suggest more targeted drone attacks at suspected terrorist targets.

The experts say that the new policy will reflect main US concerns about Pakistan: a long-running multi-dimensional crisis, political and ethnic strife, an unprecedented economic depression, and growing extremism which plays host to Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban.

According to these experts, US policy-makers fear that Pakistan today is far less resilient than it was a few years ago. Hence they want to help Pakistan prevent a possible collapse of law and order in parts of the country.

The new policy, the experts say, will also help Islamabad rebuild state institutions riddled with corruption and ineffectiveness. The main emphasis, however, will be on resuscitating the Pakistani economy.

US policy-planners fear that a severe joblessness, increasing ethnic tensions and a strong separatist movement in Balochistan pose a serious threat to the Pakistani state and they want to help Islamabad overcome these problems.