US Looks To Send More Troops To Afghanistan Soon

President George W. Bush and the two candidates have all indicated they want more U.S. troops in Afghanistan next year.

The United States is looking to send more troops to Afghanistan soon, in the face of rising insurgent violence there, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Wednesday.

"We are clearly working very hard to see if there are opportunities to send additional forces sooner rather than later," Gates told reporters at the Pentagon.

Gates said no decisions or recommendations had been made so far. Commanders of NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan were also examining how they might move troops around to bolster the fight against Taliban militants and other insurgents, he said.

"There is clearly a need both for us to see what we can do to provide additional forces but also they're clearly looking within Afghanistan to see how to reposition forces," he said.

Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, both reiterated U.S. calls for Pakistan to put more pressure on militants in border areas to stop them moving freely into Afghanistan.

Gates said reports that U.S. forces were massing on the Afghan side of the border to launch operations inside Pakistan were untrue. But he declined to rule out the possibility that U.S. troops could operate unilaterally inside Pakistan.

"We have taken defensive actions when fired upon from places right across the border. Generally, that's been in counter-artillery. And beyond that I think I won't say," he said.

NATO forces in Afghanistan hit targets inside Pakistan with artillery and attack helicopters after coming under rocket fire from across the border on Tuesday, the alliance said.

MORE TROOPS WANTED

The United States has some 36,000 troops in Afghanistan. Some 17,500 form part of a 53,000-strong NATO-led force while the remainder operate under a separate U.S. mission.

President George W. Bush and the two candidates to succeed him next January, Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama, have all indicated they want more U.S. troops in Afghanistan next year.

But Gates' disclosure that the Pentagon is now looking to send troops sooner indicates how alarmed Washington has become about the deterioration in security in Afghanistan.

In the latest sign of insurgents growing bolder and more deadly, nine U.S. soldiers were killed on Sunday in an attack near the Pakistan border. It was the single biggest loss of American life in Afghanistan since 2005.

In the past, senior U.S. officials have said that the stretched U.S. military could only send more forces to Afghanistan when it scales back its commitment in Iraq, where there are currently some 150,000 U.S. troops.

Mullen, the top U.S. military officer, said he could recommend further troop cuts in Iraq later this year.

"I won't go so far as to say that progress in Iraq, from a military perspective, has reached a tipping point or is irreversible. It has not and it is not," said Mullen, who recently traveled to Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"Security is unquestionably and remarkably better. Indeed, if these trends continue, I expect to be able early in the fall to recommend to the secretary and the president further troop reductions," he said at a joint briefing with Gates.