July 2nd, 2010  - by Najam

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama has said the change in United States (US) military command in Afghanistan will not affect his administration’s resolve to dismantle al-Qaeda and reaffirmed the US desire for an effective partnership with both Kabul and Islamabad towards that end. He said ,”Washington needs a stable Afghan government to carry out its mission of destroying the militant organization that killed 3000 Americans on September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks”.

“Our mission, first and foremost, is to dismantle and destroy al-Qaeda and its affiliates so that they can’t attack the United States.  The reason we’re there in the first place is because 3,000 Americans were killed from an attack launched in that region. We are not going to have that repeated,” he said.
Obama was responding to a question on General Stanley McChrystal’s replacement with Gen David Petraeus, “In order to achieve that, we have to make sure that we have a stable Afghan government, and we also have to make sure that we’ve got a Pakistani government that is working effectively with us to dismantle these networks,” he stated in a joint press conference with visiting Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. The US administration has been vowing to strengthen Pakistan’s ability to curb al-Qaeda and Taliban militancy in its northwestern and tribal regions along the Afghan border.
Obama emphasized that change in the US military command in Afghanistan in no way suggests a change in his administration’s policy. “When we engaged in an extensive review last year, General Petraeus was part of a group that included Secretaries Gates, Clinton, my national security team, that discussed extensively what our various options were in Afghanistan.  And what was determined was, number one, that we had to be very clear on our mission.”

Source: News Agencies