President Obama hopes to combine the best elements from among the several proposals he is studying on sending additional troops to Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said on Thursday.
“I would say it was more, how can we combine some of the best features of several of the options to maximum good effect?” Mr. Gates told reporters.. “So there is a little more work to do, but I think we’re getting toward the end of the process.”
The president is known to be weighing at least four options for deploying more soldiers to Afghanistan: sending 10,000 to 15,000 troops, 20,000, or as many as 30,000 or 40,000. But Mr. Gates’s remarks on a flight from Washington to Wisconsin, where he was to tour a factory that makes armored vehicles, were a strong signal that the president is leaning toward more flexibility than the speculation about specific numbers might indicate.
Mr. Gates said a central focus in Mr. Obama’s deliberations was “how do we signal resolve, and at the same time signal to the Afghans, as well as the American people, that this is not an open-ended commitment?”
The latest clues about the president’s thinking, as provided by Mr. Gates, came a day after it was disclosed that the United States ambassador to Afghanistan, who once served as the top American military commander there, has expressed in writing his reservations about deploying additional troops to the country.
The position of the ambassador, Karl W. Eikenberry, a retired lieutenant general, puts him in stark opposition to the current American and NATO commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who has asked for 40,000 more troops.
General Eikenberry sent his reservations to Washington in a cable last week, three senior American officials said on Wednesday. In that same period, President Obama and his national security advisers have begun examining an option that would send relatively few troops to Afghanistan, about 10,000 to 15,000, with most designated as trainers for the Afghan security forces.
This low-end option was one of four alternatives under consideration by Mr. Obama and his war council at a meeting in the White House Situation Room on Wednesday afternoon. The other three options call for troop levels of around 20,000, 30,000 and 40,000, the three officials said.
Mr. Obama asked General Eikenberry about his concerns during the meeting on Wednesday, officials said, and raised questions about each of the four military options and how they might be tinkered with or changed. Mr. Gates’s comments on Thursday reinforced the impression that Mr. Obama’s eventual choice may involve far more than just picking a certain number.
A central focus of Mr. Obama’s questions, officials said, was how long it would take to see results and be able to withdraw.
“He wants to know where the off-ramps are,” one official said.
The president pushed for revisions in the options to clarify how — and when — American troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government. He raised questions, officials said, about the exit strategy for American troops and sought to make clear that the commitment by the Untied States would not be open-ended.
One of the biggest obstacles in reaching a decision, an official said, is uncertainty surrounding the credibility of the Afghan government.
The officials, who requested anonymity in order to discuss delicate White House deliberations, did not describe General Eikenberry’s reasons for opposing additional American forces, although he has recently expressed strong concerns about President Hamid Karzai’s reliability as a partner and corruption in his government. Mr. Obama appointed General Eikenberry as ambassador in January.
During two tours in Afghanistan — from 2005 to 2007, when he served as the top American commander, and from 2002 to 2003, when he was responsible for building and training the Afghan security forces — General Eikenberry encountered what he later described as the Afghan government’s dependence on Americans to do the job that then-President George W. Bush was urging the Afghans to begin doing themselves.
Pentagon officials said the low-end option of 10,000 to 15,000 more troops would mean little or no significant increase in American combat forces in Afghanistan. The bulk of the additional forces would go to train the Afghan Army, with a smaller number focused on hunting and killing terrorists, the officials said.
The low-end option would essentially reject the more ambitious counterinsurgency strategy envisioned by General McChrystal, which calls for a large number of forces to protect the Afghan population, work on development projects and build up the country’s civil institutions.
It would largely deprive General McChrystal of the ability to send large numbers of American forces to the southern provinces in Afghanistan where the Taliban control broad areas of territory. And it would limit the number of population centers the United States could secure, officials said.
General Eikenberry crossed paths with General McChrystal during his second tour in Afghanistan, when General McChrystal led the military’s Joint Special Operations Command, which conducted clandestine operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Their relationship, a senior military official said last year, was occasionally tense as General McChrystal pushed for approval for commando missions, and General Eikenberry was resistant because of concerns that the missions were too risky and could lead to civilian casualties.
It was unclear whether General Eikenberry, who participated in the Afghanistan policy meeting on Wednesday by video link from Kabul, the Afghan capital, had been asked by the White House to put his views in writing. It was also unclear how persuasive they will be with Mr. Obama.
A spokesman for the State Department declined to comment, while a spokesman for General Eikenberry in Kabul could not be reached for comment late Wednesday.
Administration officials say that in recent meetings on Afghanistan at the White House, the president has repeatedly asked whether a large American force might undercut the urgency of training the Afghan security forces and persuading them to fight more on their own.
As Mr. Obama nears a decision, the White House is sending officials to brief allies and other countries on an almost weekly basis. The administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard C. Holbrooke, is heading to Paris, Berlin and Moscow. Other officials in his office are meeting with Chinese officials in Beijing.
Mr. Obama is expected to mull over his options during a trip to Asia that begins Thursday. He is due back in Washington on Nov. 19 and could announce the policy before Thanksgiving, officials said, but is more likely to wait until early December.
General Eikenberry has been an energetic envoy, traveling widely around Afghanistan to meet with tribal leaders and to inspect American development projects.
He has been pushing the State Department for additional civilian personnel in the country, including in areas like agriculture, where the United States wants to help wean farmers off cultivating poppies. The State Department has tried to accommodate his requests, according to a senior official, but has turned down some because of budget constraints and its desire to cap the overall number of civilians in Afghanistan at roughly 1,000.
He played a significant role, along with Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, in persuading Mr. Karzai last month to accept the results of an election commission, which called for a runoff presidential ballot.
That vote never took place because Mr. Karzai’s main opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, subsequently withdrew from the contest.
But General Eikenberry also angered Mr. Karzai early in the campaign when he appeared at news conferences called by three of Mr. Karzai’s opponents. American officials said Mr. Karzai viewed that as an inappropriate intrusion into Afghanistan’s domestic politics.
The White House Afghanistan meeting lasted from 2:30 p.m. to 4:50 p.m., and was Mr. Obama’s eighth session in two months on the subject.
A few hours before the meeting began, the president walked through the rain-soaked grass at Arlington National Cemetery, stopping by Section 60, where troops from Iraq and Afghanistan are buried.
It was Mr. Obama’s first Veterans Day since taking office, and in an address at the cemetery he hailed the sacrifice and determination of the nation’s military.
“In this time of war, we gather here, mindful that the generation serving today already deserves a place alongside previous generations for the courage they have shown and the sacrifices that they have made,” Mr. Obama said.
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