Obama vows to end Afghan occupation

US President Barack Obama says his administration will soon announce "very clear benchmarks" for Afghanistan that would bring the eight-year long occupation there to an end.

In an interview on Wednesday, Obama said that he will bring the Afghan war to an end before he leaves office.

"My preference would be not to hand off anything to the next president. One of the things I'd like is the next president to be able to come in and say I've got a clean slate," CNN quoted Obama as saying.

The president emphasized that "a multi-year occupation won't serve the interests of the United States."

"The American people will have a lot of clarity about what we're doing, how we're going to succeed, how much this thing is going to cost, what kind of burden does this place on our young men and women in uniform and most importantly, what's the end game on this thing."

The remarks come as differences emerge among the US officials on the handling of the controversial war in Afghanistan.

General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, has been warning that the war could be lost unless 40,000 more troops are deployed in the country.

Meanwhile, the US ambassador to Kabul, Karl Eikenberry, recently expressed serious reservations about a troop surge, saying that Afghan President Hamid Karzai should root out the country's corruption problem first.

However, Obama is not expected to announce a final decision on the matter for several weeks.

Although more than 100,000 foreign troops are currently fighting Taliban militants in Afghanistan, there has been no sign of stability in the war-torn country.

Thousands of civilians have lost their lives in Afghanistan since the 2001 US-led invasion.