Sen. Barack Obama met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai Sunday as part of a tour aimed at boosting his foreign policy credentials.
Sen. Barack Obama talks with U.S. troops in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, on Saturday.
The Illinois senator met with Karzai in Kabul, Afghanistan, a U.S. government source told CNN. No other details about the meeting was immediately released.
Obama had been critical of Karzai in the past for not doing enough to rebuild his war-torn country.
Earlier in the day, Obama dined with U.S. troops at an American base in the Afghan capital.
"This is my favorite thing to do," Obama said, as he sat with about two dozen soldiers, sailors and airmen in a military mess hall.
The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee was visiting Afghanistan before he embarks on a tour of the Middle East and Europe.
The trip, which comes four months ahead of the presidential election, marks Obama's first visit to Afghanistan.
"The food is excellent, but the company's even better," Obama said. His loaded his plate with bacon and scrambled eggs, but he sidestepped the grits, saying "I'm going to try to be healthy."
Obama spoke briefly to a military reporter covering the event.
"To see young people like this, who are doing such excellent work with so much dedication and pride, it makes you feel good about the country," he said. "You want to make sure that everybody back home understands how much pride people take in their work here and how much sacrifice people are making. It's outstanding."
U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Anthony Lewis, a Houston, Texas, native who sat near Obama, said he was impressed with the senator's knowledge of football "and he also was in tune with what's going on."
"He's in tune with the people and the great part is he took time out of his schedule to come over and visit us not just at this camp but other surrounding camps in Afghanistan," Lewis said. "That says a lot about his trying to get in touch with the military, and that's great."
Obama took pains to search for someone from his home state. After asking several servicemembers, one woman told him she is from Joliet, Illinois.
"I finally found a constituent and I was working hard," Obama said. "Joliet. That's what I'm talking about."
The senator traveled to eastern Afghanistan on Saturday to visit Americans forces under NATO's Regional Command East, the coalition's Combined Joint Task Force said. Obama is accompanied by Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Republican from Nebraska and Sen. Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island.
The statement said the senators were able to meet servicemembers at Jalalabad airfield, in Nangarhar province. The governor of Nangarhar province, Gul Agha Shirzai, also met the senators at the air base.
The senators also received Saturday a briefing from Maj. Gen. Jeffrey J. Schloesser, commanding general of the Regional Command East, at Bagram Air Base, the statement said.
Ahead of the trip to Afghanistan, the senators stopped in Kuwait to visit U.S. troops, said Obama campaign spokesman Robert Gibbs. They left Washington on Thursday.
In Kuwait, the senators visited Camp Arifjan for about two hours to meet with U.S. Army Central leadership, take a brief tour of the base and talk with soldiers, U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Bill Nutter said.
The senators also met with about 1,000 military members at a gymnasium, who cheered jubilantly at their arrival. Later, Obama played basketball with some soldiers, drawing cheers from his successful shots.
Asked if he would have tough talk for the leaders of Afghanistan and Iraq, Obama said he was "more interested in listening than doing a lot of talking."
"I think it is very important to recognize that I'm going over there as a U.S. senator. We have one president at a time, so it's the president's job to deliver those messages," Obama said.
The fight in Afghanistan has become a more pressing issue on the political radar. Three times as many coalition soldiers and other military personnel have died in July in Afghanistan, compared to Iraq. July's death toll for coalition troops reached 22 Saturday, after the Friday death of a Canadian soldier was announced.
Nine U.S. soldiers were killed July 13 in a fight with about 200 Taliban militants in eastern Afghanistan. It was the deadliest attack on U.S. troops in Afghanistan in three years.
Shortly after Obama laid out his foreign policy vision in Washington on Tuesday, presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain criticized his proposals as naive and premature. McCain visited Iraq in March.
"I note that he is speaking today about his plans for Iraq and Afghanistan before he has even left, before he has talked to Gen. (David) Petraeus, before he has seen the progress in Iraq and before he has set foot in Afghanistan for the first time," McCain said.
"In my experience, fact-finding missions usually work best the other way around: First, you assess the facts on the ground; then you present a new strategy."
Obama, who visited Iraq in 2006 and plans to return before the November election, called the war there a "dangerous distraction" from the battle in Afghanistan on Tuesday, and said if he is elected one one of his top goals will be to finish the fight against the Taliban and al Qaeda, which their regime harbored in Afghanistan.
"As should have been apparent to President Bush and Sen. McCain, the central front in the war on terror is not Iraq, and it never was," Obama said. He said part of his new strategy will be "taking the fight to al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan."
Obama said that on his first day in office he would give the military a new mission: ending the war in Iraq.
Obama will travel to Jordan on Tuesday, then visit Israel, Germany, France and England.
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