US wants Afghan pact signed before Afghan election

President Barack Obama has not decided how many U.S. troops to keep in Afghanistan after 2014 if the agreement is approved, or how long any U.S. troops would be there.


An Obama administration official said, however, that once a bilateral security agreement gets final approval, the president would decide within weeks how many U.S. troops would stay. The official was not authorized to discuss the subject by name and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Karzai or his designee would sign the document and then the parliament would ratify it, according to the State Department. After ratification, the Afghan president would have to again sign the agreement to make it law. That is something Karzai might or might not choose to do even if the gathering of elders, known as a Loya Jirga, embraced it and the parliament ratified it.