A resurgent Al-Qaeda and the Taliban poses a serious threat from its safe haven in the tribal areas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, Barack Obama has said.
A resurgent Al-Qaeda and the Taliban poses a serious threat from its safe haven in the tribal areas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, the US president Barack Obama has said.
"We face a security situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan that demands urgent attention. The Taliban is resurgent and Al-Qaeda threatens America from its safe haven along the Afghan-Pakistan border," Obama wrote in a letter to Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives.
Giving brief description of the situation in the region, Obama asked the House of Representatives Speaker to approve his war supplemental request of USD 83.4 billion.
"Nearly 95 per cent of these funds will be used to support our men and women in uniform as they help the people of Iraq to take responsibility for their own future -- and work to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat Al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan," Obama said in his letter on Thursday.
Though the US Congress since September 2001 has approved 17 separate emergency funding amounting to USD 822.1 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama said this would be the last supplemental request coming from the White House.
"After seven years of war, the American people deserve an honest accounting of the cost of our involvement in our ongoing military operations. We must break that recent tradition and include future military costs in the regular budget so that we have an honest, more accurate, and fiscally responsible estimate of Federal spending," Obama argued.
"We should not label military costs as emergency funds so as to avoid our responsibility to abide by the spending limitations set forth by the Congress," he said adding that after years of budget gimmicks and wasteful spending, it is time to end the era of irresponsibility in Washington.
Obama assured the Congress that his funding request will ensure that the full force of the US -- military, intelligence, diplomatic, and economic power -- are engaged in an overall effort to defeat Al-Qaeda and uproot the safe haven from which it plans and trains for attacks on the US and its allies.
"At the same time that we are increasing our troop commitment, we will employ the necessary civilian resources to build Afghan governance capacity and self-sufficiency," Obama said.
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