Ex-US official reveals war over Afghan policy

representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan until his death in 2010.

US President Barack Obama inherited the legacy of the 2001 US-invasion of Afghanistan and vowed to wind down the war when he entered the White House.

But in an excerpt from his new book,8221;The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat,8221; Nasr says 8220;my time in the Obama administration turned out to be a deeplydisillusioning experience.8221;

Clinton,who stepped down after four years as secretary of state in January,whenever possible went directly to Obama in regular private weekly meetings which she had insisted on as a condition for taking the job.

That allowed her to get 8220;around the so-called Berlin Wall of staffers who shielded Obama from any option or idea they did not want him to consider,8221; Nasr wrote in the excerpt in the online Foreign Policy magazine yesterday.

8220;Clinton got along well with Obama,but on Afghanistan and Pakistan the State Department had to fight tooth and nail just to have a hearing at the White House,8221; he said.

8220;Had it not been for Clinton8217;s tenacity and the respect she commanded,the State Department would have had no influence on policymaking whatsoever.8221;

Specifically,Clinton pushed Holbrook8217;s idea that Washington should be trying to facilitate reconciliation talks with the Taliban as a way of ending the Afghan conflict.

White House staffers had been suspicious of Holbrooke,and blocked the idea worried that Taliban talks would only expand his influence,he said.

And the military thought that talk of political reconciliation as a path out of Afghanistan would only undermine an effective counter-insurgency strategy.

8220;The White House encouraged the US ambassadors in Afghanistan and Pakistan to go around the State Department and work with the White House directly,undermining their own agency,8221; he alleged.