Barack Obama is expected to claim solid progress in the war in Afghanistan tonight. The review will contradict far gloomier findings by his own intelligence agencies that the war cannot be won while Pakistan refuses to close militant safe havens.
The review is tipped to reaffirm a US-troop drawdown from July next year with a final handover to Afghan security forces in 2014 - a plan endorsed last month by NATO to allow coalition forces sufficient time to improve local military and law enforcement capacity.
The US President signed off on a final draft of the assessment yesterday at a meeting with top national security advisers on Afghanistan and Pakistan.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said after the meeting that the review "will show that our transition can and should begin . . . in July 2011", which is Mr Obama's promised start date for a drawdown of 100,000 US troops in Afghanistan.
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