AP - Will President Bush go to war-rattled Afghanistan when he visits India and Pakistan this week? The White House isn't saying, but there's a lot of speculation here and in South Asia that he will. Both Vice President Dick Cheney and Laura Bush have visited Afghanistan.

"Even if we were going to other countries, we would announce that at an appropriate time — not before," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Monday.

Bush leaves Tuesday, first for India and then to Pakistan, which shares a border with Afghanistan.

Security tensions already are high for Bush's trip to South Asia, and a stop in Afghanistan would heighten those concerns even further because of the risk posed by al-Qaida and Taliban militants. More than 200 U.S. personnel have died in the Afghan conflict since the United States invaded the country in late 2001.

The size of the U.S. force in Afghanistan is in flux. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld announced in December that the number would shrink from about 19,000 at the time to about 16,000 by the summer.

Marvin Weinbaum, a former State Department analyst for Pakistan and Afghanistan, said Bush likely would confine any visit to heavily guarded Bagram Air Base north of Kabul.

"He has to go," Weinbaum said at Brookings Institution briefing on the president's trip. "He's in the neighborhood. Laura Bush went. Can he not go if Laura Bush took the chance and was more exposed actually — not much more, but more exposed than the president will certainly be?"