U.S. Softens Deadline for Deal to Keep Troops in Afghanistan --- KABUL, Afghanistan — With about a week left in the year, the Obama administration is backing away from a Dec. 31 deadline for securing a deal to keep American troops in Afghanistan beyond 2014, though it is standing by its warning that a total military withdrawal is still possible if delays continue, American and Afghan officials said. -- The decision is a tacit acknowledgment of what has become obvious in both Kabul and Washington: Neither a hard sell nor soft persuasion has yet induced President Hamid Karzai to go along with the American-imposed timeline for the agreement. -- “I don’t know if I would call it bluffing,” said one American official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. “But it looks like that’s what we were doing, and now it looks like Karzai is calling us out.” -- The official insisted that planning for a potentially final withdrawal in 2014 was still underway, and that it was still a very real possibility. “But if we want a deal,” the official continued, “we’re going to have to wait.” --- “We’ve been clear that our preference is to conclude the B.S.A. by the end of the year, and that if we cannot conclude a B.S.A. promptly thereafter, then we will be forced to initiate planning for a post-2014 future in which there would be no U.S. or NATO troop presence in Afghanistan,” said Laura Magnuson, a spokeswoman for the White House. “That has not changed.” -- With the deal in limbo, the official focus in Kabul has shifted to talks on a companion agreement that would allow other NATO members, such as Italy and Germany, to keep forces in Afghanistan after the alliance’s combat mission formally ends next year. - More, MATTHEW ROSENBERG - NYTimes - at: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/24/world/asia/us-softens-deadline-for-deal-to-keep-troops-in-afghanistan.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0