President Obama unveiled a new Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy Friday that includes new troops -- beyond the 17,000 additional US soldiers the president has already ordered ­ new civilian development personnel, and new aid.

But the plan also for the first time sets benchmarks – or, as the president preferred to call them, "metrics" – for US involvement in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, suggesting the military engagement is not open-ended and that both the Afghan and Pakistani governments must deliver on particular objectives. Those include reining in corruption for the Afghans and closing down Al Qaeda and Taliban safe havens for the Pakistanis.

The new "comprehensive" strategy underscores how both Afghanistan, where 38,000 US troops are already on the ground, and Pakistan, a nuclear power threatened by a growing Islamic militancy, are crucial to the battle with Islamic extremism. The futures of the two countries are "inextricably linked," Mr. Obama said.

In explaining the new strategy before an audience of military and diplomatic officials and flanked by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Mr. Obama invoked the memory of the 9/11 attacks more forcefully than ever before in his young presidency.

He revisited the history of Al Qaeda planning the attacks from camps in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, and he insisted that Al Qaeda is now "actively planning attacks on the United States" from "safe havens in Pakistan." As a result, Obama says, "For the American people, this border region has become the most dangerous place in the world."

More limited goals than Bush

Perhaps mindful that the strong reference to 9/11 might remind listeners of the former administration's justification for and handling of two wars, Obama also pointedly declared that the US was "not blindly staying the course" in Afghanistan. The new strategy is designed to "restore basic security in Afghanistan," he said, without reference to the lofty goals of democratization and freedom set by former president Bush.

The new strategy calls for 4,000 additional troops to focus on training Afghanistan's army and police. Such training is already under way by US and NATO forces, but the addition of several thousand new trainers reflects reports from the field that the training undertaken so far is yielding results. The plan also calls for several hundred additional civilian government and development experts, while it endorses a proposal before Congress for $1.5 billion in development aid to Pakistan over each of the next five years.

Announcement of the anticipated plan is the result of a two-month inter-agency review that consulted military, diplomatic and civilian development officials and experts as well as the leaders of the two principle countries involved and NATO partners. It paves the way for discussing the new strategy with international partners next week.

Secretary Clinton will attend an international conference on Afghanistan in The Hague next Tuesday armed with the new strategy. Subsequently, Obama will take it up with NATO leaders when he attends the Alliance's 60th anniversary summit in Strasbourg, France, next Friday. Those two events will permit Obama to underscore his point that the challenge presented by Afghanistan and Pakistan "is not simply an American problem -- far from it -- [but] is instead an international security challenge of the highest order."

To support that position, Obama reminded the foreign ambassadors who attended the strategy unveiling that terrorist attacks in London, Bali, North Africa, and Kabul and Islamabad have been linked to "Al Qaeda and its allies in Pakistan."

Situation in the region deteriorating

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