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...
held talks with US regional envoy, Marc Grossman, in Kabul just days after President Barack
B.O.Obama warned Pakistain there were "some connections" between its intelligence services and thugs.
"The Afghan president asked Grossman to put more pressure on Pakistain so that future meetings with them should bring a positive result," one official at the presidential palace told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Relations between Afghanistan and Pakistain, long mired in distrust, have recently deteriorated with Kabul alleging that the murder of its peace envoy Burhanuddin Rabbani
... the murdered legitimate president of Afghanistan...
was hatched in Pakistain and carried out by a Pak.
Kabul accused Islamabad of hindering the investigation and also claimed to have foiled an alleged plot in Pakistain to assassinate Karzai.
The palace quoted Grossman as promising that the United States will "continue putting pressure on Pakistain to take practical steps forward".
Karzai said further meetings with Pakistain "should bring positive results, because after all these suicide kabooms and terrorism the people of Afghanistan are losing thier patience," added the statement.
| Pakistan is the Land of the Pure because the land was repeatedly conquered by invaders from Afghanistan, not the other way round. It is Pakistan that is Afghanistan's hinterland, historically speaking, but the ruling class of Pakistan prefers to keep the truth in purdah. |
"That's what he met President Karzai about this morning," Sundwall said.
Washington has stepped up calls on Islamabad in recent weeks to break ties with the al Qaeda linked Haqqani network, blamed for last month's 19-hour siege on the US embassy in Kabul.
On Thursday, Obama accused Pakistain of "hedging its bets" in "having interactions with some of the unsavory characters who they think might end up regaining power in Afghanistan" after US-led foreign troops leave.
"And there is no doubt that there's some connections the Pak military and intelligence services have with certain individuals that we find troubling," he added.
Islamabad denies links between the Haqqanis and its intelligence services.