Defense Secretary Robert Gates flew to Belgium over the weekend for a secret meeting with the top US commander in Afghanistan, the Pentagon said, amid speculation the general may be seeking more American forces for the war.
The meeting on Sunday at a US air base in Chievres was not publicly announced beforehand and Gates did not bring reporters with him as he usually does on foreign trips.
The Defense Department revealed that Gates met General Stanley McChrystal and other top officers for five hours to hear a progress report on an assessment of the Afghan war being prepared by the commander and due later this month.
"He wanted an opportunity to speak firsthand with his commanders and his senior military advisors about how the assessment was unfolding so that he could gain as clear an understanding of the situation as possible," Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell told reporters.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, accompanied Gates to the base in Chievres, where they met with McChrystal; his deputy, General David Rodriguez; NATO's supreme allied commander, Admiral James Stavridis; the head of US Central Command, General David Petraeus; and Pentagon policy chief Michele Flournoy.
The meeting comes after a number of civilian experts advising McChrystal on his assessment publicly called for a major increase in US troops in Afghanistan — a politically charged proposal that is likely to meet with skepticism in Congress.
Morrell declined to discuss what details were addressed at the meeting and said McChrystal's assessment was by no means complete.
He said comments by some civilian analysts who served on an advisory board for McChrystal did not motivate Gates to call the unusual meeting.
"Everybody has this sense that this is wrapped up and ready to go and that they're just waiting to tie a bow on it and send it our way. I think this meeting speaks to the fact that this is still a work in progress," Morrell said.
"And the secretary wanted to get a sense of where it was headed, so that he can begin to inform his thinking and prepare for the likely assessment that will be made in the coming weeks."
There were no additional staff members taking notes and the meeting was confined to the seven senior officers and officials, he said.
Gates also raised questions for the Afghan commanders that he wants them to address in the assessment, the press secretary said.
The defense chief holds regular video conferences with US commanders in Afghanistan every other week but wanted to meet in person without time pressure or media coverage to learn about the state of McChrystal's 60-day strategy review, Morrell said.
President Barack Obama has ordered the deployment of an additional 21,000 troops in Afghanistan, with the level of US forces due to reach 68,000 later this year.
Gates, mindful of Afghans' historic hostility to foreign troops, has warned against creating too large a US military "footprint" in Afghanistan.
White House national security adviser James Jones warned US commanders that that no additional troops would be sent to Afghanistan at least before next year.
McChrystal's predecessor, General David McKiernan, had requested 10,000 additional troops to deploy to Afghanistan in 2010, but Obama did not take a decision on the request.
Sunday's meeting also followed the deadliest month for the international coalition in Afghanistan since the US-led invasion of 2001, with 75 foreign troops killed in July — most of them in attacks.
"We're coming off of a month in which we had a record number of casualties in Afghanistan," Morrell said. "So obviously the situation on the ground there is such that the secretary wants to make sure that he and his commanders are on top of it."
There are more than 100,000 international troops in Afghanistan mainly deployed under NATO and a separate US-led coalition that is trying to tackle mounting violence from a Taliban-led insurgency.
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