NATO allies agree to step back in Afghan combat role

Obama administration officials scrambled with varying degrees of clarity to explain that Panetta's announcement en route to the NATO defense ministers' meeting in Brussels that he hoped combat troops would move into a training and assistance role beginning in 2013 was not a policy change, but an optimistic look at the already-established timetable.

Panetta said he told a meeting of his 27 NATO counterparts that he hoped Afghan forces would be ready to take the combat lead countrywide sometime in 2013, with international troops shifting to a support role after a decade of inconclusive combat. That means Afghans would bear the main burden of offensive action, with U.S. and other foreign troops assisting, he said.

“There was consensus on this” among the allied defense ministers meeting at NATO headquarters, Panetta told reporters, adding that no final decision was made.

Other officials, however, said there were some differences of opinion on whether 2013 was the right time to make this change. Few besides Panetta were willing to discuss the matter publicly; the ministers were due to resume their talks on Friday.

Views on what might take place in 2013 seemed to shift throughout the day as the ministers met behind closed doors. NATO's secretary-general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, told reporters in the morning that NATO expects all Afghan provinces to have been handed over to Afghan control by mid-2013, and “from that time, the role of our troops will gradually change from combat to support.”

But by day's end Rasmussen said it was too early to say whether that shift for NATO forces from combat to support will happen in 2013.

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