Special Report: Barack Obama: The 44th U.S. President

    WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday said there is no decision yet on how to change Iraq and Afghanistan policies.

    He made the remarks at his first prime time White House press conference as president.

U.S. President Barack Obama speaks during his first news conference as president in the East Room of the White House in Washington Feb. 9, 2009. (Xinhua/Zhang Yan) Photo Gallery>>>

    "I do not have yet a timetable for how long that's going to take. What I know is I'm not going to make -- I'm not going to allow Al-Qaeda or bin Laden to operate with impunity, planning attacks on the U.S. homeland," he said, responding to a question on what's his timetable to withdraw troops from Afghanistan.

    "With respect to Afghanistan, this is going to be a big challenge," Obama said.

    On Iraq, the president also stopped short of mentioning the timetable.

    "We just saw an election in Iraq that went relatively peacefully and you get a sense that the political system is now functioning in a meaningful way."

    Then he switched the topic to Afghanistan.

    "You do not see that yet in Afghanistan. They've got elections coming up, but effectively the national government seems very detached from what's going on in the surrounding community," said the president.