President Barack Obama hosts Afghan president Hamid Karzai at the White House today for a show of wartime unity to turn the page on months of strained relations.
Mr Karzai's red-carpet treatment will seal the Obama administration's abandonment of a publicly tough approach to the Afghan leader, widely believed to have backfired and made him more resistant to US pressure.
Talks with Mr Obama, the centerpiece of Mr Karzai's four-day visit, follow meetings with other top US officials to patch over differences at a pivotal time in the nearly nine-year-old war in Afghanistan.
Washington criticised Mr Karzai openly in recent months for tolerating government corruption and the Afghan leader lashed back with a series of anti-Western diatribes.
While US concerns about corruption have not vanished, the Obama administration is now making a concerted effort to handle such matters in private and treat Mr Karzai with more respect in public. Washington is mindful that alienating Mr Karzai would risk the support they need from Afghans to make the USwar strategy work.
Mr Karzai's visit comes as the US military gears up to complete a troop buildup in Afghanistan in a bid to beat back a resurgent Taliban, stabilise the country and then fulfill Mr Obama's pledge to start bringing troops home in July 2011.
Seeking to ease Mr Karzai's worries about the withdrawal timetable, the president will reinforce his aides' promise of a long-term US commitment to Afghanistan.
"As we look toward a responsible, orderly transition in the international combat mission in Afghanistan, we will not abandon the Afghan people," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Mr Karzai yesterday.
But many Afghans are bound to be sceptical, recalling how the United States turned its back on them following the Soviet pullout from Afghanistan in 1989.
Mr Obama, meanwhile, will be looking for reassurance from Mr Karzai that an emerging effort toward reconciliation with the Taliban will be done in consultation with Washington to avoid compromising the war effort.
The US administration remains wary of overtures to the former Taliban rulers, who were toppled in a US-led invasion after for the September 11th attacks on the United States in 2001.