US and Afghan officials are weeks away from clinching a security pact allowing an American military mission to stay in Afghanistan beyond 2014, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Tuesday.
The two sides still had to resolve disagreements over controversial night raids by US troops, which Afghan President Hamid Karzai and other officials say have claimed too many civilian lives, and the transfer of US-run prisons in the country, the Pentagon chief said.
"As you know, there are two areas that we still have difficulties with, one of which involves the transfer of detention facilities, the other involves night-time raids," Panetta told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
"And we continue to try to see if we can work out some kind of compromise on those issues," he said.
But he said most of the elements of a security pact were in place.
