[Dawn] 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...
sought to distance himself Monday from controversial remarks made in an interview in which he said Afghanistan would back Pakistain against the US if the two ever came to blows.
The presidential palace said Karzai's comments, made in an interview with A private Pak television station at the weekend, were "misinterpreted".
Karzai has said that his country would support Pakistain if it was attacked by either the United States or India.
"God forbid, If any time war erupts between Pakistain and America, Afghanistan will side with Pakistain," Karzai said in an interview aired late Saturday.
The prospect of all-out conflict between the US and Pakistain remains remote, despite strained relations in recent months, following the killing of the late Osama bin Laden
... who has left the building...
by US commandos in a secret raid in a Pak garrison town.
Nevertheless the comments raised eyebrows among Western officials in Kabul allied to the 10-year campaign to keep the Taliban from returning to power.
Christopher Chambers, a 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...
front man, told news hounds in Kabul that "we all need to focus on much wider dialogue that's required for peace... and which the people of both countries mostly certainly want and certainly deserve."The palace insisted the remarks were broadcast out of context.
"Pak media has misinterpreted it," said the president's deputy front man Seyamak Herawi.
"They only showed the first part when the president says Afghanistan will back Pakistain if there is a war."
"Instead, the reference was to Afghanistan's willingness to house refugees from Pakistain in case of any conflict, in the way that millions of Afghans are given refuge across the border in Pakistain's northwestern frontier region.
"But in connection with the war on terrorism if there is a war on Pakistain, Afghanistan will not support that," he further stated.
Relations between Pakistain and Afghanistan have been long-tested, with Karzai recently accusing his neighbour of playing a "double-game" with Afghan hard boyz fighting the US-led war effort who hold bases across the border.
In the Geo interview, Karzai also sought to assuage Pak fears over US influence in the region following the drawdown of Western combat forces by the end of 2014 and restated his conditions for a long term US partnership.
Afghanistan's conditions for a US deal include that American troops must not enter Afghan homes, implying that they should end controversial night raids in pursuit of Taliban targets that have caused many civilian casualties.