Karzai looks for US partnership

HAMID Karzai, the Afghan president, yesterday said his country wants a long-term security partnership with the United States, but stopped short of calling for a permanent American military presence.

Mr Karzai was speaking after meeting Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, to discuss the American military’s role in fighting Taleban remnants in the country.

"The Afghan people want a long-term relationship with the United States," Mr Karzai said. "They want this relationship to be a sustained economic and political relationship and most importantly of all, a strategic security relationship to enable Afghanistan defend itself, to continue to prosper, to stop the possibility of interferences in Afghanistan."

Mr Karzai said he would formalise the request to the US president, George Bush, but did not say when.

"We don’t want to talk about permanent bases. We are talking about a complete relationship to give us full confidence that Afghanistan won’t be destroyed again," he said.

Mr Rumsfeld said military relations between the US and Afghanistan were strengthening and Washington was thinking more about the type of help it could offer, rather than bases.

"It may be training, it may be equipping, it may be various other types of assistance," he said. "But we think more in terms of what we’re doing, rather than the question of military bases."

Pressed on what an agreement with Afghanistan might entail and whether it could include permanent bases, Mr Rumsfeld said: "That is not a matter for the department of defence; that is a matter for the president of the United States and the president of Afghanistan to discuss in an orderly way."

In Washington, Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said discussions on security arrangements in Afghanistan were "ongoing".

Asked if Mr Bush was willing to give Afghanistan long-term security guarantees, he said: "We want to make sure that the Afghan people are able to defend themselves fully and we will continue to support them in those efforts."

Mr Rumsfeld described the military-to-military relationship between Afghanistan and the US as good, and said it had grown and strengthened, but he was noncommittal on whether Washington hoped to establish permanent military bases.

"What we generally do when we work with another country ... is we find ways we can be helpful, maybe training, equipment or other types of assistance. We think more in terms of what we are doing rather than the question of military bases and that type of thing," Mr Rumsfeld said.

There are 8,500 NATO troops in Afghanistan which have been fanning out from the capital to provide more security in the north and west, while the 17,000-strong US force focuses on fighting insurgents in the south and east.

Mr Rumsfeld was on an unannounced, whistlestop visit. He arrived in Pakistan later yesterday for meetings with the president, Pervez Musharraf, and other leaders.

Earlier, Mr Rumsfeld met with US troops in the south-eastern Afghan cities of Kandahar and Qalat, following Tuesday’s visit to Iraq.

In Qalat, where US troops are running what they call a provincial reconstruction team that provides civic aid as well as security for rebuilding projects, Mr Rumsfeld visited the soldiers on a morale-boosting mission mixed with official talks on the future US role in Afghanistan.

US commanders told Mr Rumsfeld in a detailed briefing on their operations in the province of Zabul, along the Pakistan border, that Taleban fighters still have some sanctuaries and support among the local population but that US forces operating with newly trained Afghan troops are making steady progress in eroding that support.

Qalat is in a region about 90 miles north of Kandahar and 30 miles from the Pakistan border where the Afghan government is struggling with a counterdrugs campaign and remnants of the Taleban militia that ruled before US forces invaded in October 2001.

Mr Rumsfeld shook hands and posed for photographs with a group of soldiers in Qalat and thanked them for their work before flying back to Kandahar where he spoke to several hundred soldiers and answered questions.

One soldier asked when the US army would shorten tours from 12 to six months for those serving in Afghanistan or Iraq. Mr Rumsfeld said the military was thinking about that, but had not made a decision.

Mr Rumsfeld, whose itinerary has not been disclosed in advance for security reasons, told the soldiers that both Afghans and Americans one day will look back on this period as a turning point in the spread of freedom.

"You’re earning your place in history," he said.