U.S. defense secretary arrives in Afghanistan

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates arrived in Afghanistan on Tuesday, a week after President Barack Obama announced he was sending 30,000 additional troops to the central Asian nation.

Gates said he would be meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak, as well as other American military officials on the unannounced visit.

Karzai has asked for patience as his nation struggles to take control of its own security.

"We will try our best as the Afghan people to do it the soonest possible," Karzai said in a CNN interview on Sunday. "But the international community must have also the patience with us and the realization of the realities in Afghanistan. If it takes longer, then they must be with us."

Obama has said that U.S. forces will begin withdrawing from Afghanistan in July 2011 -- at which point international troops would begin to turn over security responsibility to Afghan forces.

Karzai also offered his own timeline goal, saying Afghanistan wants to be able to assume security control in some parts of the country in two years, and to lead security for the entire country by the end of his five-year term, which just started after his recent re-election.

"We as Afghans will try our very best to reach that goal, and we hope our allies will back us to reach that goal," Karzai said.

Building and developing Afghan security forces will be a continuing challenge, Gates said, and is an effort that has involved some trial and error.

"One of the eye-openers for us was learning that the Taliban for the most part are better paid than the Afghan security forces, so that's something that we and the Afghans have already taken steps to correct," Gates told reporters on the way to Afghanistan. "I think, frankly, that's the biggest obstacle."

The Afghan president is under intense pressure to clean up government corruption, a task he said is under way.

"I have fired people and I will be firing people," Karzai said.

The main objective for Afghanistan and its allies is to defeat terrorism and return peace to the nation, neighboring Pakistan and the region, Karzai said. That means training Afghan security forces, rebuilding the economy and other nation-building efforts, he added.

Top priorities on a "long list" of reforms include improving the rule of law, improving the judiciary, reducing bureaucracy, and other steps to make the government more transparent and simpler, Karzai said.

However, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in interviews broadcast Sunday that Karzai still must prove he means what he says.

"The proof is in the pudding," Clinton said on the ABC program "This Week." "We're going to have to wait to see how it unfolds."

Clinton and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Friday that Britain, Italy, Poland, Slovakia and non-NATO member Georgia are among at least 25 countries offering to send a total of 7,000 additional troops to Afghanistan.

"Frankly, my hope was that we could get 5,000, so a commitment for 7,000 is better than I expected," Gates said. "Since spring, I have been surprised by the change of tone on the part of our allies. There's been ... a sense of the realization of the importance of being successful in Afghanistan" and "the consequences for the alliance of not being successful."

At present, there are 68,000 U.S. troops operating under both NATO and U.S. commands in Afghanistan, and about 42,000 non-U.S. forces under NATO.