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US, Taliban in discussions everyday- Karzai
March 10, 2013, 7:45 pm

[Getty Images]

Karzai accused both the US and the Taliban of double speak. [Getty Images]

Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai has asked the Taliban to halt all violent attacks if they want the United States out of Afghanistan.

The bombings, which the Taliban claimed responsibility for, “were not to show [Taliban] prowess to the United States. They were in the service of the United States. They were in the service of the rhetoric of ‘2014’. It was meant to scare us, [to show] if they [foreign forces] are not here, ‘we will not leave you alone'”, President Karzai said.

The president was speaking in Kabul, and accused both the US and the Taliban of double speak.

“The US says ‘the Taliban are not our enemies, we are not fighting the Taliban’, yet, every day, in the name of the Taliban they are harassing our people”.

Karzai went on to accuse the Taliban of being in discussions with the US.

“The Taliban themselves are every day in discussions with the US yet in Kabul and Khost they set off bombs to show their prowess to the US.”

Karzai is to meet Chuck Hagel, the US secretary of defence, in Kabul to finalise a pact with Washington for the long-term presence of US forces in Afghanistan.

The issue of US troop levels after next year’s withdrawal, when the US will halve its 66,000 troop level, will be one of the main subjects on the agenda at the talks between Hagel and Karzai.

The Afghan president ordered US special forces to leave Wardak province within two weeks on 24 February.

The decision was being taken due to allegations of disappearances and torture by Afghans considered to be part of US special forces, said a spokesman for Hamid Karzai.

“After a thorough discussion, it became clear that armed individuals named as US special force[s] stationed in Wardak province engage in harassing, annoying, torturing and even murdering innocent people,” the government statement said.

Prominent Afghan actor Nazar Mohammad Majnonyar Helmandi who starred in more than a dozen films highlighting the struggle against drug trafficking and terrorism was killed in a NATO airstrike in southern Afghanistan, Pajhwok news agency reported on Sunday.

Source Agencies