Middle East, Troop Withdrawal | featured news

Afghan and U.S. officials said Sunday they had agreed to the broad outlines of an accord governing the long-term American presence in Afghanistan after the Western combat role ends in 2014. The heads of the two countries' negotiating teams, Afghanistan's national security advisor Rangin Spanta and U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, initialed a draft of the "strategic partnership agreement" that the two sides have said they plan to finalize prior to a landmark NATO summit in Chicago next month. That gathering is expected to provide a blueprint for the final phase of the decade-long war in Afghanistan.

The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said Thursday that he believes there should be no American troop drawdowns in 2013, leaving the total at the 68,000 that will remain following scheduled withdrawals this year.

TV stations aligned with Sunni and Shiite extremist groups, many of whom attacked U.S. troops, have dubbed it the "Day of Defeating the Occupier."

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney on Thursday attacked U.S. President Barack Obama for a "signature failure" to keep some troops in Iraq to prevent the country falling back into sectarian conflict.

Soldiers who just returned from Iraq are among several thousand being ordered to Afghanistan in six months as part of a mission designed to beef up Afghan forces ahead of a planned 2014 U.S. military withdrawal, officials said.

The last convoy of U.S. soldiers pulled out of Iraq Sunday, ending their withdrawal after nearly nine years of war and military intervention that cost almost 4,500 American and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives.

President Barack Obama welcomed home some of the last U.S. troops from Iraq on Wednesday, marking a symbolic end to the nearly nine-year war that strained America's armed forces and inflicted lasting damage to its standing worldwide.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Iran on Sunday not to view the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq as an opportunity to try to build its influence in the country.

Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry accused President Obama Saturday of endangering U.S. troops by announcing plans to end the nation's military role in Iraq by Christmas. "The last thing you want to do is put those men and women's lives in peril, and I think that's what the president's done by making a political statement to his base that he's going to be out of Iraq by a date certain," Perry said.

The U.S. is abandoning plans to keep U.S. troops in Iraq past a year-end withdrawal deadline, The Associated Press has learned.