WASHINGTON, Feb 28: A day after announcing a timeline to withdraw US troops from Iraq, President Barack Obama said that now was the time to refocus on Afghanistan and Pakistan.

A senior Pentagon official, meanwhile, discussed the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan with Chinese officials in Beijing.

“It is time now to refocus on Afghanistan and Pakistan,” said President Obama on Saturday while acknowledging that after 2001 the US had lost focus on its goals in Afghanistan.

US goals in Afghanistan, he said, were not clear enough and that was why he had ordered a “head-to-toe, soup-to-nuts” review of the Afghan policy.

“Our minimal goal in Afghanistan is that we make sure that it’s not a safe haven for Al Qaeda, they are not able to launch attacks of the sort that happened on 9/11 against the American homeland or American interests,” he said.

Such a goal, he said, was achievable and the US would work with its allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan to achieve this goal.

Last week, President Obama decided to send 17,000 additional troops to Afghanistan and invited two high-level delegations from Afghanistan and Pakistan to participate in an extensive review of US strategy for their region.

Mr Obama said the United States must work with allies to bring economic prosperity and political stability to the Afghan-Pakistan region.

Earlier on Saturday, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for East Asia David Sedney met senior Chinese offi

cials in Beijing and discussed the situation in the Afghan-Pakistan region with them.“The kinds of discussions we had about Pakistan and Afghanistan, those were where we really had a new level of dialogue that we hadn’t had before,” he told reporters after the talks.Pakistan and Afghanistan are “areas where we do have shared objectives”, he added.
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