timeline for our withdrawal down to an embassy centered presence a normalization of our presence in afghanistan remains the end of 2016. so that hasn t changed. our transition out of a combat role has not changed. now, i am the first to say that as long as our men and women in uniform are serving in afghanistan, there are risks involved. it s a dangerous place. you know casualties have come down precipitously as we ve engaged in the drawdown. it s been over 90 days since two americans were killed in afghanistan. that has occurred precisely because we re not in a combat
president ghani and dr. abdullah i thank you both for your strong support of the partnership between our two nations. and yesterday they had a chance to spend time in camp david with our respective teams and had excellent discussions on how we can move forward together. today, guided by our strategic partnership, we focused on several areas. first, we agreed to continue to keep in place our close security cooperation. afghanistan remains a very dangerous place, and insurgents still launch attacks, including cowardly suicide bombings against civilians. president ghani is pursuing reforms to further strengthen afghan security forces including respect for human rights and as part of the ongoing nato mission, the united states will continue to train, advise and assist afghan security forces. as we announced yesterday, we ll work with congress on funding to sustain 352,000 afghan police
you re watching cnn. live pictures here inside the white house. any moment now we ll be taking you there as we ll be watching for a news conference held between the united states president barack obama and the president of afghanistan. one of the key issues we ll be watching and waiting for, we ll see if there are any questions being asked from members of the media media, will the afghani president get his wish he s asking for more troop presence. stand by for that happening at the white house momentarily. let s go back to our top story of the day here that crash of a german airliner in the french alps. on board, at least 150 people presumed dead. no word yet as far as why this happened what happened. what we can tell you, one of the
life expectancy literacy including for millions of girls who are in school. president ghani is a leading expert on development, and i ve been impressed by the reforms he s pursuing to make afghanistan more self-reliant. he wants to empower afghans in these efforts, and that s why under the new development partnership that we announced yesterday, u.s. economic assistance will increasingly go through afghan institutions in support of afghan priorities with an emphasis on accountability performance, and achieving results. in closing, i d note that as many of you know president ghani is by training an anthropologist as was my mother. it s been said the purpose of anthropology is to make the world safe for human differences. afghanistan and our world is marked by incredible diversity and differences of history and culture and faiths. but i believe the progress that we ve made in this visit will help to advance the goal for which so many of your citizens mr. president, have sacrificed over t
and troops through 2017. at the same time we ll continue to conduct targeted counterterrorism operations and we agreed to maintain a dialogue on our counterterrorism partnership in the years ahead. now, at our peak four years ago, the united states had more than 100,000 troops in afghanistan. in support of today s narrow missions we have just under 10,000 troops there. last year i announced a timeline for drawing down our forces further, and i made it clear we re determined to preserve the gains our troops have won. president ghani have requested some flexibility on our drawdown timelines. i ve consulted with general campbell in afghanistan and have decided we ll maintain our current posture through the end of the year. the specific trajectory of the 2016 drawdown will be established later this year.