US military leaders have proposed keeping 10,000 troops in Afghanistan after NATO's combat mission ends in December - or else pull out all forces, a US official says.
The official said on Wednesday the commander of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, General Joseph Dunford, presented the option last week to the White House, which is weighing the proposal.
"It's fair to say that the intelligence community, the State Department, the Pentagon, all believe that if we're going to have a footprint in Afghanistan after 2014, it should be about that number," said the official, referring to the 10,000 troop level.
"If that can't be, we also believe it would be most prudent to have nothing," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The option being debated by the White House - first reported by The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times - also calls for a short stay for the proposed post-2014 force, which would be scaled back and withdrawn within two years, the official said.
Such a scenario would allow President Barack Obama to end the longest US war by the time he leaves office in January 2017.
Any future force after December still hinges on Afghan President Hamid Karzai signing a bilateral security agreement between the two countries that lays out a legal framework for a US military presence beyond 2014.
Karzai has so far refused to sign the deal.
The proposed security pact with Afghanistan would allow US troops to stay through 2024.
The White House acknowledged it was looking at options for a post-2014 force but would not comment on the choices laid out by the Pentagon.
"The president has not yet made decisions about final troop numbers and I'm not going to discuss the details of our ongoing deliberations," National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said in an email.
"We will be weighing inputs from our military commanders, as well as the intelligence community, our diplomats and development experts as we make decisions about our post-2014 presence in Afghanistan."
Hayden reiterated that Afghanistan needed to sign the security agreement or else the US government would have to start planning for a complete withdrawal of US and NATO troops from the country.
Under the Pentagon proposal, US commanders hope the 10,000 US troops would be joined by 2000-3000 forces from other NATO countries, according to the Journal.
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