KABUL (Reuters) – President Hamid Karzai triggered uncertainty about a vital security pact with the United States yesterday by saying it should not be signed until after Afghanistan’s presidential election next April, prompting the White House to insist on a year-end deadline.
Karzai’s surprise move, which came just a day after US Secretary of State John Kerry said the pact’s language had been agreed upon, suddenly threw its future into question and seemed certain to reignite tensions with Washington.
The Afghan leader spoke to about 2,500 tribal elders and political leaders from across Afghanistan gathered in the capital for a Loya Jirga, or grand council, to debate whether to allow US troops to stay after the planned 2014 drawdown of foreign forces.
Without an accord on the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA), the United States says it could pull out all its troops at the end of 2014 and leave Afghan forces to fight the Taliban insurgency on their own.
In a statement certain to irritate the United States, which is eager to clinch the deal as soon as possible, Karzai told the assembly any agreement on the status of US forces would have to wait until after a presidential election in April.
“This pact should be signed when the election has already taken place, properly and with dignity,” Karzai, who cannot run in the 2014 vote under the constitution, told the elders.
US officials said without a security deal, there would be no agreement to leave a residual force of US troops behind in Afghanistan after 2014.
James Dobbins, special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, told PBS Newshour it is important to gain approval of the agreement quickly to plan for the future US mission in Afghanistan.
“I think delaying the signing to April will make it much for difficult for us to make our commitments. It’ll make it more difficult – and make it virtually impossible for other countries to make their commitments. I think it’ll have a long-term, deleterious impact on the scale of international assistance to Afghanistan,” he said.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said President Barack Obama wants the security pact approved and signed by Afghanistan’s government by the end of this year. “We hope that they will move quickly to approve the text of that agreement,” Earnest told reporters.
Putting pressure on Karzai to change course, Earnest said Obama will decide about the enduring American presence in Afghanistan after the Afghan government approves the security deal.
While Obama has not yet determined whether a US troop presence will continue after 2014, any deployment would involve only a “few thousand troops,” Earnest said. US troops have been in Afghanistan since late 2001.
A senior Afghan official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Karzai intended to leave the pact unsigned until he is sure the international community will not interfere in the election. Karzai’s spokesman, Aimal Faizi, confirmed that, adding that the grand assembly and parliament also had to approve the pact.
