U.S. wants allies' fresh troops in Afghanistan by mid-2010

WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- The United States wants its allies' pledged fresh troops to be deployed in Afghanistan by mid-2010, a senior defense official said on Monday.

"In term of the force flow, the goal is to get them all in, in the first half ... of 2010," said Michele Flournoy, U.S. undersecretary of defense, at a policy conference in Washington.

The United States' NATO allies and non-NATO partners, some with a majority of their population opposing the war, have pledged at least 7,000 more troops to Afghanistan, in support of President Barack Obama's new Afghan strategy, which includes 30,000 new troops from the United States.

Flournoy, the Pentagon policy chief, said some of the allies have temporarily sent in troops to help maintain security during the Afghan elections. Some of those troops are to stay, but most of the new troops would come from home.

The United States plans to send in the fresh troops by the summer of 2010. If the allied troops are to be deployed around that time too, the U.S. troops and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), whose levels currently stand at around 106,000, would number over 140,000 by the middle of 2010.