US President Barack Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai were scheduled to mend fences yesterday, after months spent trading barbs over alleged vote-rigging and corruption in Karzai’s government.
The White House talks and press conference come a day after Washington vowed long-standing commitment to Afghanistan.
The Obama administration is rolling out the red carpet for Karzai’s four-day visit as senior officials from both sides mapped out what US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called their “shared” future.
On Tuesday Washington and Kabul’s top brass opened broad-ranging talks about boosting agriculture, increasing Afghanistan’s transit trade through Pakistan, fighting drug trafficking and training the Afghan army and police.
“We will not abandon the Afghan people,” Clinton said as she sat next to Karzai before a U-shaped table where 40 US and Afghan ministers had gathered in the State Department’s ornate Benjamin Franklin room. “Our civilian commitment will remain long into the future.”
Ignoring his recent public spats with Washington, Karzai echoed Clinton’s support for an enduring relationship.
“Afghanistan is known around the world for being a country that remembers a friend — and for long. And that assurance I can give you on behalf of the Afghan people,” he said.
Karzai later joined Clinton for a tour of Washington’s Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital where he met US soldiers who lost limbs during combat in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the US Congress will press Karzai to rein in corruption even as lawmakers to welcome him for a host of meetings today.
Despite promising to deal with endemic corruption when he took office for five more years in November, Karzai is widely considered to have taken little action other than blaming donor nations for lax supervision of pledged aid.
Karzai also raised his own government’s demands for a better relationship.
“Afghanistan will seek respect for its judicial independence. Afghanistan will be seeking protection for its civilian population,” he said, wearing his trademark cap and robes.
He praised recent efforts by General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of US and NATO troops in Afghanistan, to shield civilians from harm, but called for further efforts.
In related news, an Afghan guerrilla group has turned down a draft peace proposal by Karzai’s government offering insurgent leaders exile in third countries in an effort to end the nine-year-old war.
The Hezb-i-Islami (HIA) party led by a former prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, which runs a separate insurgency force from the Taliban against the government and NATO and US-led forces, said the offer was “completely unacceptable and out of question.”
An official for the party and member of its team which held an initial round of direct peace talks with Karzai in March, said the group still insisted on setting a withdrawal timetable for foreign troops before the start of any parley.
“The only way out of this imbroglio is the complete and unconditional withdrawal of the foreign occupiers from the country with a reasonable timetable which is already offered by HIA’s leadership,” Qareeb Rahman Saeed said.
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