Gates reassures Afghans U.S. troops not leaving yet

KABUL (Reuters) - U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates reassured Afghans on Tuesday that Washington would not abandon them abruptly, and said a withdrawal due to begin in 2011 could be spread over several years to train Afghan troops.

In a notable shift of tone, Gates appeared to take a milder stance towards corruption in President Hamid Karzai's government, accepting that the international community and the United States itself shared some of the blame for how they manage aid.

Gates flew unannounced to Kabul where he met Karzai, the most senior visit by a U.S. official since President Barack Obama announced a new strategy last week, sending 30,000 extra troops but pledging to begin withdrawing them in 18 months.

In Washington, the Pentagon announced orders for the first wave of 16,000 extra troops, starting by nearly doubling the U.S. Marine Corps contingent in the restive south.

The announcement that U.S. troops would start leaving in 2011 has alarmed some Afghans who fear Taliban insurgents will wait them out. Gates stressed that there would be no quick pullout.

"As President Obama and I have said repeatedly, our government will not again turn our back on this country or the region," Gates told a news conference alongside Karzai.

"We will fight by your side until the Afghan forces are large enough and strong enough to secure the nation on their own."

The withdrawal to begin in July 2011 will be "gradual" and "conditions-based" and could take years, he said: "Whether it's three years or two years or four years remains to be seen."

Karzai repeated an earlier pledge that Afghan security forces would take over security in the entire country within five years, and Gates said he hoped that timeline could be met or even beaten as Afghan security forces improve. Both said Afghan security forces could still require Western funding for 15 or 20 years.

Karzai, who is expected to announce his new cabinet within days, has faced a wave of criticism from his Western backers, especially Washington, that his government is corrupt, especially after a fraud-tainted re-election that embarrassed donor states.

In one of the biggest corruption cases in Afghanistan for years, a deputy attorney general, Enayat Kamal, said a court had handed down a four-year sentence for abuse of power against Kabul Mayor Abdul Ahad Sayebi.

However, the mayor's staff said he was working normally, attending a meeting in his office.

DONORS PARTLY TO BLAME

Appearing with Gates, Karzai called corruption "a malaise affecting our society" and said it fell to Afghans "to remove it and to cut it down to minimum to the best of our abilities."

The Afghan leader has sounded exasperated when pressed on corruption in recent interviews, blaming Western donors in part for mismanaging multi-billion dollar aid contracts that dwarf Afghanistan's own small budget. Gates acknowledged as much.

"The international community, including the United States, bore some responsibility for these problems, in no small part because of the enormous amount of money the international community has been spending here in Afghanistan," Gates said.

"President Karzai has taken responsibility for dealing with the problem insofar as the Afghans are concerned. We have to do what we can to do to help make it more difficult for people to misbehave," he said.

Another source of tension between Karzai and his Western backers has been civilian casualties.

Afghan soldiers shot dead four civilians on Tuesday who were demonstrating against a NATO-led attack in eastern Afghanistan, witnesses and a Reuters journalist said. NATO said no civilians died on the operation, but other reports said several were killed.

Gates hinted at a less confrontational approach towards Karzai earlier, telling reporters on his plane that there was a tendency to paint the Afghan government "with too broad a brush," and that many ministers and governors were competent. He singled out the defence and interior ministers for praise.

The U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, was to give long-awaited testimony in Congress later on Tuesday, his first since issuing a dire assessment in August that said the war would be lost without new troops.

He is expected to face questions about whether the 30,000 troops he is receiving is enough, after being widely reported to have asked for 40,000 in a classified request in September.

U.S. ambassador Karl Eikenberry will also testify, likely to be asked whether he supports the increase after officials leaked word that he had cautioned against sending extra troops without imposing tough conditions on Karzai. McChrystal and Eikenberry say they are in agreement and both back Obama's new strategy.

Receiving extra combat power before the traditional warm weather fighting season begins was one of McChrystal's key recommendations. The first new troops -- 1,500 extra Marines -- will being arriving "within days," Gates said.

In all, 8,500 more Marines will arrive in southern Afghanistan by spring 2010, nearly doubling the Marine contingent and expanding its headquarters to form a more effective fighting force in the main southern battlefields of Helmand and Kandahar.

The escalation will mean there will be 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, two-thirds of whom will have arrived since Obama took office. There are also about 40,000 troops from NATO allies. NATO says allies have committed 7,000 extra troops since Obama's speech, although that figure does not account for nearly 5,000 Canadian and Dutch troops, most of whom are withdrawing.

(Additional reporting by Sayed Salahuddin and Yara Bayoumy; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Alex Richardson)

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