Country will never be ‘a puppet state’:
Afghan leader warns against international meddling
AFGHAN: Afghan President Hamid Karzai has insisted his country
will never be “a puppet state” and urged the international community
against meddling in Afghan politics in the run-up to a presidential
election later this year.
Karzai faces an election in August, at a time when the country is
embroiled in a vicious Taliban-led insurgency and the performance of his
government has been criticized by President Barack Obama’s
administration and other Western capitals as inefficient and corrupt.
NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said Wednesday that the
alliance needs four more battalions in addition to nearly 60,000 troops
already in the country to provide security for the August election. A
battalion normally includes 750 to 850 soldiers.
Speaking alongside de Hoop Scheffer, Karzai told a news conference in
Kabul that his government’s foreign partners should respect and honor
his country’s independence.
Karzai said he appreciated the work that the U.S. and other members
of the international community have done to fight terrorism and rebuild
the country. But, without singling out any nation, he accused some of
proposing to weaken the central government.
“The issue of governance and the creation of (a mechanism for) good
governance is the work of the Afghan people,” Karzai said. “Afghanistan
... will never be a puppet state.”
Karzai was responding to a question from an Afghan journalist who
suggested international forces operating in the provinces were trying to
directly support local leaders there.
Zalmay Khalilzad, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations,
Afghanistan and Iraq, recently told The New York Times that he had
warned the Obama administration against any attempts to focus on local
areas at the expense of the central government. “Some will regard it as
an effort to break up the Afghan state, which would be regarded as
hostile policy,” Khalilzad, who is an Afghan-American, told the
newspaper in January.
As the new U.S. administration shifts the focus from the Iraq war to
Afghanistan, Obama has ordered a review of America’s strategy in the
region. The results of the review are expected later this month.
Kabul, Thursday, ap
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