By Phil Stewart and Adam Entous
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A request for additional troops from the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan has been transferred to President Barack Obama and has started working its way through the military chain of command, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.
It remains unclear how soon Obama will act on the request, which General Stanley McChrystal submitted to Defence Secretary Robert Gates last month.
The request recommends sending up to 40,000 additional U.S. and NATO troops to Afghanistan next year -- on top of the 104,000 in place -- as part of an expanded counter-insurgency mission that focuses more on securing the support of the Afghan people than killing militants, according to congressional officials.
Obama, who has launched a review of his administration's six-month-old war strategy, remains undecided on whether to send additional troops as recommended by McChrystal to try to reverse gains by a resurgent Taliban, officials said.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama received the request from Defence Secretary Robert Gates on Thursday before travelling to Europe, where he met briefly with McChrystal.
"We're going to go through this process of evaluating the goals and the strategy, and ... at a point after that, we'll get to discussing resources," Gibbs said.
Pakistan's foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, said in Washington that he expected Obama to settle on a strategy and troop levels later this month or in early November.
The decisions may be the most important, and difficult, of Obama's young presidency, congressional leaders say.
U.S. and NATO casualties have risen, and public support for the eight-year-old war has eroded. Sending as many as 40,000 additional troops could spark a backlash within Obama's own Democratic Party.
Sending a smaller number of troops, or no troops at all, will open Obama up to further criticism from congressional Republicans and, possibly, the military, for taking a more politically palatable middle road approach.
An alternative to the current counter-insurgency strategy, backed by Vice President Joe Biden, would focus more narrowly on al Qaeda targets with air strikes.
But Obama told congressional leaders in a closed-door session on Tuesday that he would neither substantially reduce the U.S. mission in Afghanistan, nor shift the strategy to focus mainly on hunting militants.
Officials said strong consideration was being given to a war strategy that incorporates both counter-insurgency and counterterrorism operations inside Pakistan's tribal areas.
FORMAL REVIEW BEGINS
"The president requested it, the secretary provided it to him as well as to the principals, and now it is working its way up the formal chain of command, here and in NATO," Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell told reporters.
He described the request as "informal" because it had yet to work its way through the chain of command, a process that allows for "vetting" and comments from commanders.
Officials said it remained unclear when the troop request would be discussed as part of the White House review, which includes a meeting on Wednesday focussed on Pakistan and a session on Friday focussed primarily on Afghanistan.
Morrell described McChrystal's request as an "analytical" document that offers Obama and military leaders a range of options as well as "one recommendation" on resources.
Morrell said the request, which will be kept secret, was based upon the assumption that the United States was pursuing a counter-insurgency strategy.
"If the decisions that are made in the coming weeks are different from that, there can be adjustments made to the request," Morrell said.
Gates has yet to provide the president with his personal recommendations, the Pentagon said.
But Gates, who is a pivotal player in the decision making, has said that many of his earlier reservations about adding forces have been addressed. He also remains a strong proponent of a counter-insurgency strategy, which could signal that he may be leaning towards a further buildup.
Pressure has been building on Obama for weeks to make a swift decision. Republican Sen. John McCain, who was defeated by Obama in last year's presidential election, repeated his call for Obama to implement the commander's recommendations and not take "half-measures."
Morrell said the decision to bypass the usual vetting process by commanders followed last month's embarrassing leak of McChrystal's classified assessment, which cautioned that the war effort risked failure without more troops.
"I think we wanted to avoid any opportunity for leaking of this before ... the president had an opportunity to see it himself," Morrell said.
(Additional reporting by David Alexander, Caren Bohan, Sue Pleming and Susan Cornwell; Writing by Adam Entous; Editing by Will Dunham)
