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U.S. Official Gives Karzai an Ultimatum on Signing Security Pact
[NY Times] President B.O.'s national security adviser, Susan E. Rice, imposed an ultimatum on President Hamid Maybe I'll join the TalibanKarzai ... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a Pashtunface on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use... of Afghanistan on Monday, telling him to stop his delay in signing a security agreement or potentially face the complete and final pullout of American troops by the end of 2014, according to American and Afghan officials. But while Mr. Karzai was said to have assured her he would sign the deal at some point, he gave no time frame for it. And over dinner at the presidential palace in Kabul, he later insisted on difficult new conditions as well, including the release of all inmates at the American prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, adding to the perception of crisis between the two nations, officials from both countries said. "Ambassador Rice reiterated that, without a prompt signature, the U.S. would have no choice but to initiate planning for a post-2014 future in which there would be no U.S. or NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions... troop presence in Afghanistan," according to a summary of the meeting released by the White House. The meeting comes a day after Mr. Karzai rejected a recommendation from his own handpicked assembly of Afghan leadership figures, a loya jirga, that by year's end he should sign the bilateral security agreement, which would allow for an extended American military presence in Afghanistan after 2014. Mr. Karzai told the loya jirga that he wanted to wait to sign it until after the Afghan presidential elections next April, while continuing to negotiate with the Americans. In response, the White House summary said, "Ambassador Rice stressed that we have concluded negotiations and that deferring the signature of the agreement until after next year's elections is not viable, as it would not provide the United States and NATO allies the clarity necessary to plan for a potential post-2014 military presence." Ms. Rice arrived in Afghanistan under a cloak of secrecy on Saturday, and the White House did not confirm she was here until after she was already meeting with Mr. Karzai on Monday evening, along with other brass hats from both Washington and Kabul, and Mr. Karzai's senior aides. The meeting lasted several hours, and it continued into what Aimal Faizi, Mr. Karzai's front man, who was there, described as a working dinner. And while the tone was said to be generally diplomatic and polite, the president at one point became angry at the American ambassador, James B. Cunningham. Mr. Cunningham voiced objection to an extra demand by the loya jirga: the release of all Guantanamo inmates. He insisted that United States law governs the release of the prisoners and that the issue had no bearing on the bilateral security agreement, or B.S.A.
He was referring to all 31 recommendations issued by the loya jirga on Sunday, the main one being that the Afghan president should sign the agreement within one month. Nearly all 50 committees of the jirga recommended that deadline, while the other recommendations came from various committees and ran the gamut from allowing Afghan observers to attend American military trials to banning Christian religious observances on American military bases. Another recommendation was for an American military base in the remote province of Bamian, the most peaceful place in the country. Posted by: Fred 2013-11-26 |
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