McChrystal sees slower pace for Kandahar operation

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Military operations to gain control of Kandahar, the Taliban's birthplace, will move more slowly and take longer than initially planned, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan said on Thursday.

General Stanley McChrystal said he wanted more time to shore up Afghan support for the operation and to build up the capabilities of local authorities to provide services as security improves.

The changes, following setbacks in a U.S.-led offensive in neighbouring Helmand province, may add to doubts about what can be achieved in southern Afghanistan before the year's end, when the White House plans to review progress in the war.

U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates said gains would need to be seen by then in order to maintain public support for the nearly nine-year-old war at home and in Europe.

Support has eroded as the NATO death toll has soared to record levels. At least 17 foreign troops have been killed this week alone.

The military operation in Kandahar was billed to start in earnest this month and be the biggest of the war, the linchpin of McChrystal's strategy to turn the tide this year.

"I do think that it will happen more slowly than we had originally intended," McChrystal told reporters on the sidelines of a NATO meeting in Brussels. "It's more important we get it right than we get it fast."

U.S. commanders had initially seen the main thrust of military operations in Kandahar running from June to the beginning of August, before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, according to an internal schedule seen by Reuters in March.

Though he did not detail a revised Kandahar schedule, McChrystal said: "I think it will take a number of months for this to play out... We want this thing to be as shaped as possible before we go."

"There will be significant things happening after Ramadan as well," he said.

Asked if the United States would know by the year-end whether the operation in Kandahar was successful, McChrystal said, "I think we'll know whether it's progressing ... I don't know whether we'll know whether it is decisive."

U.S. President Barack Obama last year embraced a counterinsurgency strategy devised by McChrystal that aims to push the Taliban from key population centres. Obama is sending 30,000 more troops this year and has set the goal of starting a gradual drawdown in July 2011, security conditions permitting.

LESSONS LEARNED

McChrystal said the changes in Kandahar reflected lessons learned by the U.S. military during an offensive earlier this year in Marjah in Helmand province, the biggest operation of the war so far, which proved more difficult than expected.

"As we did it, we found that it's even more complex than we thought and so we need to educate ourself from that and do it even better in Kandahar," McChrystal told reporters.

"I want to make sure we've got conditions shaped politically with the local leaders, with the people. We really want the people to understand and literally pull the operation towards them as opposed to feel as though they are being forced with something they didn't want," he said.

McChrystal said he still envisaged a gradual campaign in Kandahar aimed at delivering security and governance, as opposed to one big military assault.

"We are already in the process of doing political and military shaping but ... I think that the timing in which we can be decisive in the environs around the city will probably happen more deliberately than we had originally laid out."

The fragility of the security situation in Kandahar was underscored on Wednesday when at least 40 people were killed by a suicide bomb attack on a packed wedding party in an area north of Kandahar city.

(Editing by David Brunnstrom)