KABUL, Dec 20: The United States plans to send between 20,000 and 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan next year, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen, said here on Saturday.

Gen David McKiernan, the US commander in Afghanistan, has asked for more than 20,000 extra troops to counter a rise in militant violence, including four combat brigades, an aviation brigade and other support forces.

“The troops that were asked for in joint discussions with Gen McKiernan is what we’re going to need for the foreseeable future. So I don’t see an increase any higher at this point than 20,000 to 30,000,” Mullen told reporters.

He said he hoped the extra troops could be deployed by mid-2009.

The build-up would nearly double the US military presence in Afghanistan, raising it from 31,000 troops to over 50,000.

On Friday, a US military official said Defence Secretary Robert Gates had already ordered the deployment of a combat aviation brigade with 2,800 troops to Afghanistan next year. “This is the beginning of the sourcing of the increased requirement that he (McKiernan) has asked for,” the official said.

The aviation brigade, composed of a mix of attack and transport helicopters, will deploy to Afghanistan after January from the United States, he said.

Mullen said beefing up US forces in Afghanistan was linked to winding down in Iraq.

“Available forces are directly tied to forces in Iraq. As we look to the possibility of reducing forces in Iraq over the course of the next year, the availability of forces to come here in Afghanistan will increase,” Mullen said.

He said the attacks by militants in Mumbai last month showed the need to reduce tensions between India and Pakistan and that would help bring stability to Afghanistan.

“That’s another big piece of the strategy, what I would call regional focus to include Pakistan, Afghanistan and India... leadership in all three of those countries to figure out a way to decrease tensions, not increase tensions,” Mullen said.

He claimed that the late arrival of winter this year had meant there were still significant flows of militants from the tribal belt along the Pakistani side of the border, but better cooperation with the Pakistani military was nevertheless helping.

“We’re not there, we still have a long way to go but we’ve actually made a lot of progress.”

He said the Afghan government was not as strong as he had anticipated and engaging with tribal areas in remote parts of Afghanistan could be central to future operations.

“We may have overstated the focus on the ability of the central government to have the kind of impact that we wanted, given the history here in Afghanistan.”

Mullen also said more must be done to boost economic development in Afghanistan, one of the world’s poorest countries, and to make the Afghan government more effective.

“No amount of troops, no amount of time will provide a solution here without development,” he said.

In an interview aired on Wednesday, Gates indicated there would be limits to the US military build-up because of fears that the larger the presence, the greater the risk that Afghans would turn against it as an occupation force.

“I think that we can meet the requirements of the commander in Afghanistan, our commander, Gen McKiernan, for the additional four brigade combat teams and a combat aviation team, without tipping the balance,” he said.

“But ... after those forces are provided, I think we should think long and hard before we make any further significant troop contributions in Afghanistan,” he said in the interview on PBS television.—Agencies