Karzai slams US over Afghan massacre

Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Photo Reuters
Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Photo Reuters
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has lashed out at the United States for failing to cooperate fully with an investigation into the massacre of 16 Afghan villagers and questioned whether only the U.S. staff sergeant accused could have been involved.

A series of blunders by the United States, including the killings in Kandahar province on Sunday and the inadvertent burning of copies of the Koran at a NATO base last month, has further strained already tense relations between the countries.

" This has been going on for too long. You have heard me before. It is by all means the end of the rope here," Karzai told reporters at the heavily fortified presidential palace.

Flanked by senior officials, a tired and sometimes angry Karzai listened to village elders and the families of victims of the massacre at the start of an expected two days of talks to discuss the killings.

Some at the meeting shouted, some demanded answers, but all said they wanted any soldiers involved punished.

"I don't want any compensation. I don't want money, I don't want a trip to Mecca, I don't want a house. I want nothing. But what I absolutely want is the punishment of the Americans. This is my demand, my demand, my demand and my demand," said one villager, whose brother was killed in the nighttime slaughter.

Furious Afghans and lawmakers have demanded that the soldier accused of the killings be tried in Afghanistan, but despite those calls, the U.S. staff sergeant was flown out to Kuwait on Wednesday and was en route to a maximum security facility in Kansas on Friday.

"The army chief has just reported that the Afghan investigation team did not receive the cooperation that they expected from the United States," Karzai said. "Therefore these are all questions that we'll be raising, and raising very loudly, and raising very clearly."

Karzai appeared to back the belief of the villagers, and many other Afghans, including the country's parliament, that one gunman acting alone could not have killed so many people, and in different locations some distance apart.

"They believe it's not possible for one person to do that. In (one) family, in four rooms people were killed, women and children were killed, and they were all brought together in one room and then put on fire. That one man cannot do," Karzai said.

Seeking to placate the Afghan leader, President Barack Obama called Karzai to reaffirm plans for Afghan forces to take a lead in combat operations next year and assume full responsibility for security across Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

A White House summary of their phone call on Friday showed that Washington was determined to stick to the current timetable for the security transition and U.S. troop withdrawal for now.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said the two men "were very much on the same page," despite Karzai's demand on Thursday for the handover of security to Afghan police and soldiers by 2013, a year ahead of schedule.

It was Obama's second call with Karzai this week, rare for a U.S. president who has had a sometimes testy relationship with his Afghan counterpart and has often kept him at arm's length.

Carney said Obama called Karzai to congratulate him on the birth of a daughter and they took the opportunity to reaffirm a commitment to the current plans for U.S. withdrawal.

"The two leaders also affirmed that they share the goal of building capable Afghan security forces and strengthening Afghan sovereignty so that Afghans are increasingly in charge of their own security, with the lead for combat operations shifting to Afghan forces, with U.S. forces in support, in 2013," he said.

The White House said they discussed Karzai's "longstanding concerns regarding night raids and house searches" and agreed to talk further about his concerns about NATO troops in Afghan villages. Karzai called on Thursday for NATO troops to leave the villages and confine themselves to major bases, underscoring fury over the massacre and clouding U.S. exit plans.

With twin investigations into the massacre still underway by both U.S. and Afghan officials, any discovery of more than one soldier involved in the massacre would be a disaster for NATO, with Western leaders needing to win over Afghans ahead of a withdrawal by most foreign combat troops in 2014.

Civilian casualties caused by NATO forces hunting insurgents are a major source of friction between the Afghan government and its Western backers, and have damaged efforts to win the "hearts and minds" of locals in the decade-old war.

"Our families are finished and our houses are destroyed," said a furious Hajji Abdul Samad Aka, who lost 11 members of his family in the killings in two villages of Panjwayi district.

In another incident on Friday, a NATO helicopter crashed into a house on the outskirts of the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Friday, killing 12 Turkish soldiers on board and four Afghan civilians on the ground, Turkey's military and a senior Afghan police official said.

An unnamed U.S. official told The New York Times the attack by the accused soldier was a result of "a combination of stress, alcohol and domestic issues - he just snapped."

The lawyer for the soldier, Seattle attorney John Henry Browne, said the staff sergeant was upset at having to do a fourth tour of duty in a war zone and was likely suffering from stress after seeing a colleague badly wounded.

Browne told Reuters that post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, would likely be part of the defense of the soldier, whose name has not been released. The lawyer said the soldier would arrive on Friday afternoon at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, which has the Pentagon's only maximum-security facility.

Anger over the massacre spilled into weekly Friday prayers at a major mosques in central Kabul with one cleric calling the shooting "unforgivable" and questioning how a soldier with alleged mental problems could be in the U.S. military.

"Revenge for the blood of these victims will be taken either today, tomorrow, in 10 years or the next 100 years," said Mullah Ayaz Niazi at Wazir Akhbar Khan mosque in Kabul's diplomatic enclave, which is also home to NATO headquarters.

In a further blow to NATO hopes of a negotiated end to the decade-old war, the Taliban said on Thursday it was suspending nascent peace talks with the United States, following the massacre and ahead of the traditional summer fighting months.

The United States said it was committed to political reconciliation involving talks with the Taliban but progress would require agreement between Kabul and the insurgents.

"The Taliban leadership were and may still be serious about talks, but instead of discussing how to end the war, they will now be persuading the rank and file to go out again this year and fight," Kate Clark of the Afghanistan Analysts Network said.

"That another round of fighting and killing is now on the agenda is a difficult prospect to face," she wrote in a blog.

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