Karzai tries to stall US security talks

KABUL: President Hamid Karzai’s shifting stance during security talks with the US has infuriated Washington and mystified many Afghans, but analysts say his tactics are driven by a belief that he is in a position of strength.
Negotiations on a security pact allowing some US troops to stay in Afghanistan after 2014 have seen the Afghan president at his most unpredictable. 
Karzai’s leadership of Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001 has been marked by attempts to demonstrate his credentials as an independent nationalist despite his reliance on US aid and military power. Now, in the final months of his presidency, he appears to have gambled that the US will never enact its threatened “zero option” of a complete troop pull-out.
“The negotiations provide Karzai with the opportunity to play hard, given the timing and the desperation of the Americans to get this agreement signed as soon as possible,” Daud Muradian, former Afghan foreign official, said.
“The bilateral security agreement (BSA) will be the first major agreement to allow a superpower to have military bases here -- one of the red lines of Afghan nationalism.
“Karzai doesn’t want to be judged before history as someone who just put his signature on an agreement that sold Afghan soil to foreigners. This is a big deal for Afghanistan.”
The high-stakes game over the future US presence in Afghanistan, where Taliban Islamists remain determined to regain power, intensified a notch on Monday when Washington repeated that a full military pull-out was on the table. 
AFP