U.S. Afghan pullout not an option, White House says

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House on Monday ruled out any consideration of a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan as part of President Barack Obama's sweeping strategy review of the increasingly unpopular war there.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said that leaving Afghanistan was not "on the table" as Obama prepared to brief congressional leaders and convene his war council again this week on how to deal with the deteriorating security situation.

"I don't think we have the option to leave," Gibbs told reporters. "That's quite clear."

Obama faces pivotal decisions in the coming weeks after the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, presented a dire assessment of the eight-year-old war effort.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates called on Monday for patience and discretion as Obama decides on the course of the war, urging advisers to speak "candidly but privately."

Gates did not single out anyone in his address at a U.S. Army convention in Washington, but his comments followed very public remarks by McChrystal, who has faced criticism for seeming to lobby for his position that more troops are needed.

The debate within the Obama administration is now over whether to send thousands more U.S. troops, as McChrystal has requested, or scale back the U.S. mission and focus on striking al Qaeda cells, an idea backed by Vice President Joe Biden.

"I believe that the decisions that the president will make for the next stage of the Afghanistan campaign will be among the most important of his presidency," Gates said.

As the strategy debate in Washington gathered steam, Afghan election authorities began a recount on Monday in the disputed presidential election held in August.

With U.S. casualties on the rise, American public opinion has turned increasingly against what Obama's aides once hailed as the "good war," in contrast to the unpopular war in Iraq that occupied the focus of his predecessor George W. Bush.

There also have been increasing calls from the anti-war left and foreign policy critics for a U.S. pullout. Dozens of protesters gathered outside the White House on Monday, and a few were arrested when they chained themselves to the gates.

KEY MEETINGS

Seeking to shore up support, Obama invited senior Democratic and Republican lawmakers to the White House on Tuesday to discuss the future course of the war. He is due to meet his national security team on Wednesday and Friday.

The Obama administration already has almost doubled the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan this year to 62,000 to contend with the worst violence since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban rulers in 2001. The U.S. invasion was launched in the weeks after the September 11 attacks carried out by al Qaeda, which had been given a haven in Afghanistan by the Taliban.

McChrystal has warned in a confidential assessment that the war effort would end in failure without additional troops and changes in strategy.

But signing off on the 30,000 to 40,000 troop increase that McChrystal is said to have requested would be politically risky for Obama due to unease within his own Democratic Party and fatigue among the American public after eight years of war in Afghanistan and six in Iraq.

U.S. forces in Afghanistan suffered their worst losses in more than a year when fighters stormed remote outposts near the Pakistan border over the weekend. On Monday, foreign and Afghan forces launched an assault against a group of Taliban in the same area where two days before U.S. forces had faced their deadliest battle in more than a year.

Eight American soldiers were killed on Saturday after tribal militia stormed two combat outposts in remote Nuristan province in eastern Afghanistan.

VOTE RECOUNT

New rules issued by a U.N.-backed watchdog appear to make it unlikely that President Hamid Karzai's preliminary election win in Afghanistan can be overturned.

Election commission deputy head Zekriya Barakzai said the recount of randomly selected samples of ballot boxes deemed suspicious would take several days, with a final result from the August 20 poll likely to come next week.

Allegations of fraud in the election are one of the reasons U.S. officials have cited for launching a review of policy toward Afghanistan.

The outcome of the fraud investigation theoretically could force a second round in the election, but new rules issued by the U.N.-backed Electoral Complaints Commission appear to make that less likely by treating suspicious ballot boxes the same way regardless of which candidate received the suspect votes.

Preliminary results showed the incumbent Karzai winning with 54.6 percent in the August 20 vote.

Karzai has acknowledged that some fraud took place, but says the extent of it was exaggerated by Western officials and news media.

(Additional reporting by Peter Graff and Sayed Salahuddin in Kabul and Phil Stewart in Washington; Editing by Will Dunham)

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