WASHINGTON — At a pivotal point in the administration’s Afghanistan strategy, President Barack Obama and his top Afghan war commander met privately aboard Air Force One on Friday for a talk the White House described as productive.
The 25-minute meeting with Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, aboard Air Force One as it waited to carry the president home from Denmark, gave Obama a chance to step outside the circle of advisers he has convened to study the problem of Afghanistan.
His war council has been sharing opinions on whether the U.S. should send thousands more troops to tamp down the Taliban or shift to a narrower focus on al-Qaeda in neighboring Pakistan.
The Copenhagen meeting was an extension of those war council sessions “as we reassess and re-evaluate moving forward in Afghanistan,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters afterward.
He said Obama and McChrystal “both agree that this is a helpful process.” No decisions were made at their meeting, Gibbs said.
Obama was in the Danish capital to pitch Chicago’s bid to host the 2016 Olympics, and McChrystal was summoned there from London, where he gave a speech Thursday.
Hours after Obama and McChrystal met, the Pentagon said the general’s official request for more troops will not be sent to the White House until next week at the earliest.
At issue is Obama’s looming decision to stick with the current mission in Afghanistan — which could require adding as many as 40,000 additional U.S. service members — or scale back the military option and expand operations targeting terrorists in Pakistan.
