WASHINGTON — Sen. Daniel K. Inouye will travel to Afghanistan and Pakistan over the next week to assess the volatile situation there as the White House and the nation's top commander in the war-torn theater weigh the need for more troops there.

Inouye's trip comes as violence in the eight-year war is escalating, and leading players within the Obama administration are conflicted over strategic paths to follow: increase troop levels by as much as 40,000, or scale back the mission.

Inouye heads the powerful Appropriations Committee and its defense subcommittee, which together have significant control over the purse strings of the military on Capitol Hill and potentially the course of the campaign in Afghanistan.

In addition, as the nation's second-most senior senator and a recipient of the Medal of Honor for his service in World War II's European theater, Inouye's opinion on matters of national defense carries considerable weight.

But on the eve of his trip, Inouye made clear he is traveling with an open mind.

"I'm not ready to say one way or another whether we need more troops to aid the war effort in Afghanistan," he said yesterday. "That's one of the reasons I am going. It's one thing to listen to a general, but it's another to listen to the Afghan people, the intelligence operatives on the ground and the troops and their commanders who put themselves in harm's way each day. If I am going to support more troops, believe me, I am going to need good reason for that. I know what happens to men and women, to their wives and husbands and their families when we send them off to war."

Inouye will travel tomor- row through Tuesday. The senator did not provide any details about his itinerary, but that is a standard security protocol.

His travel into perhaps the nation's most difficult foreign policy region comes as the White House is increasingly conscious of the role Capitol Hill could play through its power to control defense spending.

"Obviously, there are different roles," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said yesterday. "One is the role of commander in chief. Another, obviously, though, is the role of ... the appropriations process, particularly, in the resources that are needed to move forward. I think, obviously, that's an extremely important role. You can't do one without the other."

The Senate yesterday was on the threshold of approving a $636 billion defense spending bill, that contained $128 billion for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

That funding would cover the cost of President Obama's plan to add 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan, which would bring the total number of U.S. forces there to 68,000 by the end of 2009.

U.S. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the nation's top field commander in Afghan- istan, has indicated he would like as many as 40,000 more U.S. troops on top of that as part of a plan to broaden the fight against the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, denying al-Qaida a staging ground and securing peace for the Afghans so they can build schools and roads.

But there is friction even at the highest levels of policymaking in the Obama administration that Inouye will have to navigate as he reaches his own conclusions about the campaign.

Contrary to McChrystal, Vice President Joe Biden believes that the mission in Afghanistan and Pakistan should be scaled back to a counterterrorism strategy aimed more at al-Qaida rather than the Taliban.

Reach John Yaukey at jyaukey@gannett.com.