KABUL: Afghan President Hamid Karzai has rejected a provision of a US-Afghan security pact, putting the entire deal in jeopardy just days before the country’s elite gather to debate it, a senior Afghan official and a Western diplomat said.
The question of whether foreign troops will be able to search Afghan homes after Nato’s combat mission ends next year has long been a sticking point of an agreement setting out the terms under which remaining US forces will operate there.
But in a series of meetings over the weekend the enter-and-search issue emerged as the biggest roadblock facing the security pact as Karzai dug his heels in, the Afghan official, who has been close to the talks said.
Without an accord on the Bilateral Security Agreement, Washington says it could pull out all of its troops at the end of 2014, leaving Afghanistan’s fledgling security forces on their own to fight the Taliban-led insurgency.
Two years ago, the United States ended its military mission in Iraq with a similar “zero option” outcome after the failure of talks with Baghdad, which refused to guarantee immunity to US personnel serving there.
The United States is concerned that as campaigning intensifies for Afghanistan’s presidential election next April, it will be increasingly difficult to broker a security pact. “They want a window left open to go into Afghan homes, but the president does not accept that - not unilaterally and not joint,” the Afghan official said, referring to house raids by US troops either on their own or with Afghan forces.
The US embassy and Nato headquarters in Kabul declined to comment, but a Western diplomat in Kabul with knowledge of the talks confirmed the two sides had reached an impasse.
Another meeting between Karzai, the US envoy and the Nato commander was expected yesterday, though the official said there was little hope of a breakthrough.
REUTERS
