WASHINGTON - Two top Republican presidential candidates clashed over the pace of withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, reflecting a lack of consensus in the main American opposition party.
Republican presidential hopeful, Mitt Romney, supported the view of commanders on the ground regarding a timetable to withdraw 30,000 troops in 2012, but Jon Huntsman, the former ambassador to China, said the US did not need 100,000 troops in Afghanistan.

"I think it must be consistent with recognizing the reality on the ground of what we don't need -- 100,000 troops in Afghanistan. We don't need to nation-build in Afghanistan when this nation so desperately needs to be built," Huntsman said, adding the US did not need more than 10,000 to 15,000 troops in Afghanistan

Commanders on the ground feel the US should bring back its surge troops by December of 2012 and bring down all soldiers, other than perhaps 10,000 or so, by the end of 2014.

"The decision to pull our troops out before that, they believe, would put at risk the extraordinary investment of treasure and blood, which has been sacrificed by the American military. I stand with the commanders in this regard and have no information that suggests that pulling our troops out faster than that would do anything but put at great peril the extraordinary sacrifice that's been made," he remarked.

Romney said America's effort was to keep Afghanistan from becoming a launching point for terror against the United States. "We can't just write off a major part of the world. Pakistan is the sixth-largest country in the world. We can't just say goodbye to all of what's going on in that part of the world.

"Instead, we want to draw them towards modernity. And for that to happen, we don't want to literally pull up stakes and run out of town, after the extraordinary investment that we've made. And that means we should have a gradual transition of handing off to the Afghan security forces the responsibility for their own country," Romney concluded.