Senators press Obama for deep Afghan withdrawal

WASHINGTON - Democratic and Republican senators are circulating a letter to President Obama pressing for a "sizable and sustained" withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

Mr. Obama is to make a decision in the coming weeks on how many of the 100,000 American forces he should withdraw from Afghanistan in July. Many war-weary lawmakers are pushing for deep cuts, citing the death of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden as a game-changer.

In the letter, more than two dozen senators say it makes no sense to maintain a significant number of troops in Afghanistan. They said troop cuts should include combat forces.

The senators say it is misguided for the United States to think it could do nation-building in Afghanistan. They said a shift in strategy is necessary.

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Meanwhile, suicide bombings near an Afghan governor's office and an administrative building killed 11 people Wednesday, while a mortar shell narrowly missed one of the country's vice presidents at a police training center outside the capital.

Attacks by Taliban-led insurgents are increasingly killing, wounding or narrowly missing senior Afghan government and NATO officials. Wednesday's gathering near Kabul, to celebrate the opening of the training center, was also attended by the interior minister, who is in charge of police forces nationwide.

In the northeast, a suicide bomber exploded about 220 yards from the office of Governor Azizul Rahman Tawab, killing four police officers and four civilians, said provincial spokesman Halim Ayar. The Interior Ministry gave a slightly different toll, putting the number of dead at seven, five of them were policemen.

The government ministry called the attack cowardly but said it would not "weaken the determination of the Afghan National Police."

Another suicide bomber killed three civilians, including a 13-year-old boy, in an attack against an administrative building in Paktia province, a restive area of eastern Afghanistan. The bomber was wearing an explosives vest and blew himself up just outside the front gate of a district headquarters near the border with Pakistan, said Allah Gul Ahmadzai, chief of the Sayed Karam district.

The mortar strike in central Wardak province, near the capital of Kabul, did not cause casualties, but it crashed down just next to a building where Afghanistan's second vice president, Mohammed Karim Khalili, and Interior Minister Bismullah Khan Mohammadi where attending a police ceremony along with NATO officials.

They were celebrating the opening of the flagship center of a multibillion dollar NATO program to train Afghan national security forces before a planned withdrawal of U.S.-led coalition forces at the end of 2014.

The deafening blast shook the building and more than 500 police recruits ducked for cover. Gunshots rang out after the attack.

Bodyguards rushed Afghan and NATO officials into a hardened shelter before evacuating them on helicopters.

The area has seen increasing attacks by insurgents as the Taliban press a spring campaign against Afghan and NATO forces.

It was unclear if Khalili, who was born in Wardak, was the intended target of the attack, but the mortar shell seemed to have been aimed at the building where he had just finished delivering an address.

The $106 million facility currently houses 725 recruits but will expand to 3,000, making it the largest facility of its kind in the country. A mostly U.S. funded program set aside $10 billion a year for 2010 and 2011 alone to train, equip and build infrastructure for a range of Afghan forces, including police, soldiers and an air force. That program calls for increasing the number of Afghan police to 134,000 by October from the 81,509 of two years ago.

U.S. Maj. Gen. James Mallory told The Associated Press that NATO would be able to properly train and support an estimated 157,000 police officers before the coalition's planned withdrawal in 2014.

However, he acknowledged there would be long-term legacy costs that the international community would need to bear for the country as it struggles economically, especially as 86 percent of incoming recruits cannot read or write.

"We're dealing with a lost generation," Mallory said. He spoke at the training center just before the mortar attack.

Also Wednesday, in the southern province of Kandahar, NATO and Afghan troops killed 14 armed insurgents, the governor's office said. Nine were killed after crossing the Pakistani border, while five were killed while trying to plant roadside bombs, the governor's office said.

A rocket attack in Kandahar city wounded four civilians in the Aymo Mina district, provincial police chief Gen. Abdul Raziq said.

A NATO service member died Wednesday in a bomb attack in southern Afghanistan, the coalition announced. Twenty-eight international service members have died in Afghanistan so far in June. A total of 234 have been killed this year.