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| Obama meets with Senate Republicans - USA TODAY Posted: 11 Oct 2013 09:13 AM PDT  Obama meets with Senate RepublicansPresident Obama met Friday with Senate Republicans as their House GOP counterparts discussed a short-term increase in the debt ceiling that would head off an historic government default. Obama and the Republican senators also planned to discuss ways to end the government shutdown, now in its 11th day. The Senate meeting came the morning after Obama sat down for 90 minutes with House Republican leaders, and authorized further staff talks about a deal based on a temporary hike in the nation's $16.7 trillion debt ceiling. Republicans said Obama asked them to include in the package funding to reopen the government. Prior to leaving for the White House, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Tex., said, "Members on both sides of the aisle here in Congress are discussing solutions and those discussions will continue when we return from the White House." If Congress does not increase the debt ceiling by Thursday, the government will lose authority to borrow money to pay its bills and would have to default on some of them. A plan offered by House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, would extend borrowing authority until Nov. 22, while Republicans and the White House negotiate a new spending plan to end the shutdown. After Obama's meeting with Boehner and other House GOP members, a White House statement said that "no specific determination was made" on a path forward. "The President's goal remains to ensure we pay the bills we've incurred, reopen the government and get back to the business of growing the economy, creating jobs and strengthening the middle class," the statement said. |
| In Afghanistan, US losing patience as deadline for long-term deal nears - Washington Post Posted: 11 Oct 2013 09:12 AM PDT During a testy video conference in June, President Obama drew a line in the sand for Afghan President Hamid Karzai. If there was no agreement by Oct. 31 on the terms for keeping a residual U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, Obama warned him, the United States would withdraw all of its troops at the end of 2014. With that deadline less than three weeks away and deep rifts persisting, the White House appears increasingly willing to abandon plans for a long-term, costly partnership with Afghanistan. Despite the Pentagon's pleas for patience, much of the rest of the administration is fed up with Karzai and sees Afghanistan as a fading priority amid far more ominous threats elsewhere in the world. Secretary of State John F. Kerry arrived in Kabul Friday on an unannounced visit in an effort to convince Karzai that the administration is serious. "October 31st is our goal," a senior administration official said. "The president has been clear. There can be no reason" for failure "other than the fact that the Afghans don't want what we're offering." Meanwhile, serious new irritants in the relationship have convinced Karzai that he was right to question American good faith in year-old negotiations on a deal. The accord is considered critical for the international community to continue funding the Afghan government and shoring up its nascent security forces. Under the Bilateral Security Agreement, or BSA, the United States plans to leave a still-unspecified number of troops — between 5,000 and 10,000, most probably — in Afghanistan to train and advise its security forces after the final withdrawal of what are now 52,000 combat and support troops. Karzai was enraged several weeks ago, Afghan officials said, when U.S. forces forcibly took custody of a senior Pakistani Taliban leader whom Afghan intelligence was trying to recruit. In the previously unreported incident, U.S. forces intercepted an Afghan government convoy and seized the leader in Logar province, Karzai spokesman Aimal Faizi said. In doing so, Faizi added, the Americans foiled a months-long bid by the Afghan government to wean the Taliban commander, identified by others as Latif Mehsud, from the battlefield and use him to help launch substantive peace talks. Faizi called the seizure a major breach of sovereignty. Although Karzai has not mentioned the case publicly, his private fury has been reflected in recent suggestions that Afghanistan might forgo a bilateral pact. In a separate incident, Pakistan last month freed a top Afghan Taliban official, Abdul Ghani Baradar, whom Karzai sees as a possible interlocutor for his peace efforts and whose release he had long demanded. This week, however, Pakistan again placed Baradar under house arrest in the port city of Karachi. Karzai immediately suspected an American hand at work; U.S. officials said they feared that Baradar would return to plotting attacks against American forces in Afghanistan if he were left on the loose. Both the CIA and the Defense Department declined to comment on either incident. |
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