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Karzai Will Not Sign Security Agreement
[An Nahar] The U.S. intelligence chief said Tuesday he does not expect Afghanistan's Caped 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... to sign a security agreement with the United States that would allow American troops to stay after 2014. Washington has repeatedly appealed to Karzai to sign the bilateral security agreement (BSA) negotiated last year but James Clapper, director of national intelligence, said he had given up hope that the Afghan president would endorse the deal. "Well, obviously, it takes two to sign this," Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "And it's my own view, not necessarily company policy, ...I don't believe President Karzai is going to sign it," he said. His comments were the most explicit yet by a senior U.S. official acknowledging the bleak prospects of Karzai backing the agreement. Senator Carl Levin ...Democrat Senator-for-Life from Michigan. He has been in the Senate since 1979. Prior to that he was president of the Detroit city council and Mayor Coleman Young's right-hand man. He is currently the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services... , chairman of the committee, asked Clapper if it would be better for the U.S. government to wait for the next Afghan president to sign the deal after the country's April elections. Clapper said that would be a policy decision and not up to him but he said such a move could "have a salutary effect." The United States favors leaving about 10,000 troops in Afghanistan after this year to help train Afghan forces and counter al-Qaeda turbans and its allies. The delay in signing the security agreement, which would set up a legal framework for foreign troops to stay post-2014, has created uncertainty and undermined confidence among Afghans, Clapper said. "The effect already of the delay has been negative in terms of the impact on the economy, not to mention I think the psychological impact," he said. Posted by: Fred 2014-02-12 |
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