Obama issues orders to top officials on Afghan strategy

WASHINGTON, Nov. 30 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Barack Obama has issued orders to his top military and diplomatic officials on the executions of his to-be-unveiled new Afghan strategy, the White House said Monday.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters said Obama issued the orders during a meeting in the Oval Office on Sunday.

While offering few details of the contents of Obama's speech --to be delivered at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. --he stressed that the president will discuss the importance of an exit strategy.

"This is not an open-ended commitment," Gibbs stressed.

Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, David Petraeus, head of Central Command, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Jim Jones, the National Security Adviser, were given orders from the president, he said.

Gibbs said Obama is discussing his decision with a number of foreign leaders, including British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

He is also meeting privately with Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd at the White House on Monday.

Although the speech is still in draft form, senior U.S. officials quoted by Monday's the New York Times as saying that the president wanted to use the address at West Point "not only to announce the immediate order to deploy roughly 30,000 more troops, but also to convey how he intends to turn the fight over to the Kabul government."

"It's accurate to say that he will be more explicit about both goals and time frame than has been the case before and than has been part of the public discussion," said a senior official, speaking on the conditions of anonymity.

"He wants to give a clear sense of both the time frame for action and how the war will eventually wind down," he added.