President Barack Obama met with his war cabinet yesterday for “possibly” the last time before deciding whether to dispatch tens of thousands more US troops to Afghanistan, an official said.

The meeting comes as Obama weighs a request from his top commander in Afghanistan for up to 40,000 more US troops to support the war effort there.

Among the top administration officials expected at the meeting were Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of Defence Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The meeting will be the ninth time Obama has met with his national security team as part of a review of Afghanistan strategy since August.

An administration official said it would “possibly” be the last time Obama will consult his team before announcing the new strategy, though he cautioned “that’s not something we can say definitively.”

Obama made it clear in interviews as he travelled in Asia recently that an announcement was on the horizon, telling reporters a decision would be made “in the coming weeks”.

The top US commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, has requested up to 40,000 more US troops, warning the conflict could be lost within a year without reinforcements.

But Obama faces opposition from his own Democratic party and many Americans to dispatching more US troops to the conflict now in its
ninth year.

Meanwhile, the president will decide “in the coming days” whether to attend a United Nations climate change summit in Copenhagen next month, a senior administration official said yesterday.

The high-level summit will seek a global treaty on tackling climate change to replace the Kyoto Protocol, whose obligations to cut carbon emissions expire in 2012.

As the leader of one of the world’s two biggest polluters, Obama is under considerable pressure from US allies to attend the conference.

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