Afghan President Hamid Karzai will visit Washington in January to discuss with the Obama administration "a shared vision of Afghanistan beyond 2014."
Addressing a joint news conference with Karzai after a meeting between the two at the presidential palace in Kabul on Thursday, US Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said the Afghan leader has accepted an invitation from President Barack Obama to meet in Washington during the week of January 7.
American Forces Press Service quoting a U.S. official said the discussion will include the role the United States will play in the country after 2014, and the implementation of the strategic partnership that Obama and Karzai signed in May.
Discussion will include progress made in negotiating the Bilateral Security Agreement that would replace the current Status of Forces Agreement, and lay out ground rules for a potential U.S. military presence after 2014, the official said, along with an Afghan-led peace process and the future of Afghanistan's security forces.
As Obama has made clear, the official added, any U.S. presence after the end of the NATO mission would be at the invitation of the Afghan government and aimed at training Afghan forces and targeting the remnants of al-Qaida.
Panetta told reporters that he "personally witnessed the fact that Afghanistan is moving in the right direction towards achieving the sovereignty and independence it has always desired."
Panetta strongly affirmed that the United States supports the aspirations of the Afghan people to be secure and self-governing, adding that forces from 49 countries are working together to achieve that goal.
The purpose of the military effort is to build the Afghan National Security Forces' capabilities so they can assume full responsibility for security, the Defense Secretary said.
"The ANSF are out in the front lines as we speak, fighting and dying every day to protect their fellow citizens," Panetta added.
Continued coalition support for the Afghan forces will include a focus on leadership development, an effort to build their planning, logistics and procurement capabilities, and training that will allow them to provide larger and more complex operations on the battlefield, Panetta said.
Recent progress on security in Afghanistan "makes it all the more important to confront broader strategic challenges that we face, and we are doing that," he said.
Both nations are working more closely to try to get Pakistan to confront the challenge of terrorism and insurgency in safe havens across the border, Panetta said.
Over two days in Afghanistan, his eighth visit to the war torn country in the last four years, Panetta met with U.S. and Afghan leaders in Kabul and in Kandahar, gathering information he says will help inform the decision President Barack Obama will soon make on troop levels there after 2014.
After meeting with his Afghan counterpart Bismillah Khan Mohammadi and Afghan Interior Minister Mujtaba Patang in Kabul, Panetta flew to Kandahar Air Field to meet with the leadership of Regional Command-South. Panetta met with all the U.S. commanders throughout Afghanistan.
After Panetta and his group left Kandahar and returned to Kabul, insurgents detonated a vehicle bomb near Kandahar Airfield, killing one service member and wounded three others and several Afghans, American Forces Press Service reported.
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