Clinton: Taliban talks unpleasant but necessary

WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is defending the Obama administration's outreach to the Taliban as unpleasant but necessary to bring stability and security to Afghanistan as the U.S. begins to drawdown troops from the country.

Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday that true peace cannot be achieved in Afghanistan without reconciling the fractured elements of its society. She said U.S. officials were involved in "very preliminary" contacts with Taliban members. But she stressed that Washington would not deal with extremists who are unwilling to break their ties with al Qaeda and to support the Afghan constitution, including its provisions for respecting the rights of women and minorities.

Clinton said history shows that insurgencies are nearly impossible to defeat without a combination of military pressure and negotiation.

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On Wednesday, President Barack Obama laid out his plans to begin withdrawing the approximately 100,000-strong American military force from Afghanistan. Under the timetable Mr. Obama presented, 10,000 troops would return home by the end of the year, with an additional 23,000 troops pulled out by the end of 2012.

Mr. Obama reaffirmed his goal of bringing all U.S. troops home by 2014 and completely turning over security responsibilities to Afghan police forces.

The withdrawal plan has been criticized by some in Mr. Obama's own party as being too slow. The president's military advisers, however, were in favor of a slower pullback than Mr. Obama decided on, arguing that it could compromise any successes gained since 30,000 additional troops were sent over in 2009.

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Indeed, the U.S. military's top officer told Congress Thursday that President Obama's plan is riskier than he originally was prepared to endorse.

Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed Services Committee that he supports the president's plans, which have been widely interpreted as marking the beginning of the end of the U.S. combat role in Afghanistan.

But Mullen said the pullout plans are "more aggressive and incur more risk" than he had considered prudent.

"More force for more time is, without doubt, the safer course," Mullen said. "But that does not necessarily make it the best course. Only the president, in the end, can really determine the acceptable level of risk we must take. I believe he has done so."