Obama telephoned President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan on Thursday to share the main elements of the strategic review.

Setting benchmarks for Pakistan could be particularly difficult. For years, the United States has simply paid bills submitted by the Pakistani government for counterterrorism operations, even during truces when its military was not involved in counterterrorism.

Obama said that “an uncompromising core of the Taliban,” the fundamentalist party that America and its allies ousted seven years ago, must be defeated militarily, but that other opposition forces “who have taken up arms because of coercion, or simply for a price,” must be drawn back into the fold.

(With PTI and ENS)