US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters Tuesday there are no clear deadlines for withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan, but Washington intends to do so as soon as possible, US State Department reported.

His remarks came on the situation around Afghanistan before flying to the ministerial meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Bangkok.

The chief of the US administration said on Monday the US authorities intend to reduce the number of US troops in Afghanistan to the next presidential election, to be held in the US in November 2020.

“I saw the reporting on that. I wish reporters had been a little more careful in what they had said. They got it wrong. There’s no deadline for this. The President has been very direct about his expectations that we will reduce our operational footprint on the ground in Afghanistan just as quickly as we can get there, consistent with his other mission set, which is to ensure that we have an adequate risk reduction plan for making sure that there is not terror that’s conducted from Afghanistan as well,” he said. “So we have a twin set of missions. Ambassador Khalilzad – I spoke to him two or three hours ago – is engaged with Afghan Government, other elements of the Afghanistan leadership, as well as with the Taliban to try and deliver a peace and reconciliation plan that will permit us to conduct a conditions-based withdrawal from Afghanistan as quickly as we can execute it. So I saw the comments from yesterday. I hope they’re out not only before the next election but before we land today, right. I hope – our mission set is to do this as quickly and as – in a responsible method as we can achieve, consistent with the work that Ambassador Khalilzad has been engaged in for the last six or seven months.

We’ll do this with our partners in the region. All of the elements of Resolute Support are fully briefed on what we’re doing. We will have an orderly plan for how we’re going to maintain our counterterrorism posture in the region. There’s really not much news here other than as each day goes by, we’re getting closer to getting an understanding from all the parties in Afghanistan about how we would deliver this better outcome not only for the United States and the others who are – who have soldiers and sailors and airmen and marines on the ground and in the air, but for the Afghan people as well. That’s the mission the President’s laid out, and we’re working our way there. I hope in the next handful of weeks we’ll have significant progress we can announce.”

In June, the state secretary said that Washington was looking forward to reaching an agreement on peace in Afghanistan with the Taliban before September 1. Following the last round of talks with the Taliban, Khalilzad said that the parties had achieved progress on all four sections of the peace agreement: counter-terrorism guarantees, the withdrawal of troops, participation in intra-Afghan dialogue and talks, and a permanent and comprehensive cease-fire.

The military operation in Afghanistan has been going on for more than 17 years, since October 2001. At the peak of the campaign in 2010-2013, the number of Western forces in this country exceeded 150 thousand people. The main US and NATO combat forces were withdrawn from Afghanistan in 2014, and now the 14,000th mission of instructors and advisers of the alliance remains in this country.