WASHINGTON (AP):

Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain - in a rare moment of agreement on foreign policy - called in separate speeches Tuesday for thousands more American troops to fight growing violence in Afghanistan, but they gave no ground on their profound differences about the Iraq war.

As Obama prepared to travel to both countries, he laid out a five-point foreign policy strategy, its top goal still being the withdrawal of most American forces from Iraq within 16 months of taking office. That, he said, would free troops - as many as 7,000 - to fight al-Qaida and Taliban militants in Afghanistan.

While McCain said United States commanders in Afghanistan needed three additional brigades - nearly 11,000 troops - he said they must be deployed under the kind of revamped strategy that has brought down violence in Iraq.

Concerned

He further claimed that he knew more than Obama about "how to win wars".

"I know how to do that," he said.

McCain also expressed concern that Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, who has the backing of the administration of US President George W. Bush, "has not been effective".

"Karzai has not been the strong leader we had hoped he would be," he said.

Obama, meanwhile, said in a speech in Washington that the US must end the war in Iraq and that Afghanistan, by contrast, is "a war that we have to win".

McCain insisted in his Albuquerque, New Mexico, speech that the US military effort in Iraq was working - as evidenced by the lower level of violence - and would be successful in Afghanistan as well. He also accused Obama of offering misguided military plans for the region before he had even set foot in the country.