US mulls larger troop pullout from Afghanistan: NYT

New York Times says officials arguing change is justified by rising cost of war and death of Osama bin Laden.

WASHINGTON: Top White House national security advisers are considering much more significant troop reductions in Afghanistan than those discussed even a few weeks ago, The New York Times reported late Sunday.

The newspaper said some officials were arguing that such a change is justified by the rising cost of the war and the death of Osama bin Laden.

President Barack Obama is expected to address these decisions in a speech to the nation this month, the report said.

The National Security Council is convening its monthly meeting on Afghanistan and Pakistan on Monday, and assessments from that meeting are likely to inform decisions about the size of the force, The Times said.

Before the new thinking, US officials were anticipating an initial drawdown of 3,000 to 5,000 troops, the paper noted.

Those advocating steeper troop reductions did not propose a withdrawal schedule, according to the report.

But the latest strategy review is about far more than how many troops to take out in July, the paper noted. It is also about setting a final date by which all of the 30,000 surge troops will be withdrawn from Afghanistan, The Times said.

Obama sent an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan last year in a bid to gain the initiative in the war against Taliban-led insurgents which started in 2001, while vowing to begin pulling out forces by mid-2011.

Roughly 100,000 US troops are stationed in Afghanistan as part of an international force.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in Afghanistan Saturday that a "modest" number of troops would likely be pulled out in July and argued for maintaining pressure on the insurgents to force them to the negotiating table, possibly by the end of the year.