Obama: Key for Afghans to provide for own security

By Caren Bohan and Patricia Zengerle

TOKYO (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Friday he would make a decision soon on his Afghanistan strategy and the plan would make clear the goal is for Afghans to provide for their own security.

He added that the U.S. commitment in Afghanistan could not be open-ended.

Asked at a news conference in Japan what information he still needed to enable him to make a decision, Obama said it was not matter of awaiting a piece of data.

Instead, he said, "It's a matter of making certain that when I send young men and women into war and devote billions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer money, that it's making us safer and that the strategies that are in place, not just on the military side but also on the civilian side, are coordinated and effective in our primary goal."

The ultimate aim, he said, was to protect America and its allies from attack.

The president is weighing several options for boosting U.S. force levels in Afghanistan, a decision likely to escalate America's involvement to confront a resurgent Taliban and their al Qaeda allies.

Proposed options range from dispatching 10,000 to about 40,000 additional troops, according to a U.S. official.

Republicans have criticised Obama for taking so long to announce his decision and a new poll by Zogby Interaction found that nearly half of those surveyed viewed the lengthy deliberations as a sign of weakness by the president.