U.S. pressuring Afghan leadership to ensure important agreement - Russian presidential envoy for Afghanistan
MOSCOW. Feb 27 (Interfax) - Russian special presidential envoy for Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov doubts that the United States is really planning to fully withdraw its troops from Afghanistan after 2014 if Afghan President Hamid Karzai fails to sign a security agreement with the U.S.
"All this looks like pressure on Karzai to make sure that a document important primarily to the U.S. is signed," Kabulov told Interfax.
"If the U.S. pulls its troops out, then the American leadership will have to explain, primarily to its taxpayers, what they have been doing for the past 12 years, where all these resources have gone, and why all these casualties were needed," he said.
"Perhaps this all will predetermine the decision. For the time being, I don't think the Americans will really be pulling out their troops," he said.
However, even if the U.S. and NATO fully withdraw their forces after 2014, this would worsen the situation in the country but not make it critical, he said.
"The American troops have stayed in Afghanistan for 12 years, but it is not better or safer to live there. If they abandon everything and go without performing a number of duties, not having finished off the terrorist bases and elements and not having completed their support for building combat-efficient Afghan armed forces, there will be a negative effect, but I don't think this would be the end of the world, and the world won't collapse on this," he said.
"In these conditions, it will be harder for the Afghans to live and work, but in any case, as these 12 years have shown, Afghanistan cannot be quelled using military force alone. It is necessary above all to speed up the national reconciliation process and build the national economy," he said.
Even if U.S. forces stay in Afghanistan after 2014, the agreement upon which Washington is insisting envisions that U.S. troops would stay only within their military bases and would not be able to be actively involved in combating extremists, he said.
"Whether they are there or not, it's all the same. This is why Karzai is saying that the presence of numerous American bases without resolving the country's pressing issues will be of no use for the Afghan people," Kabulov said.
In commenting on NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen's statement that the alliance's troops would not be able to stay in Afghanistan if the U.S.-Afghan agreement is not signed, the Russian diplomat suggested that this shows vividly how much NATO depends on the United States.
"This shows how much the NATO members are dependent on the U.S., because they cannot do anything on their own. This is true, and these 12 years have demonstrated this. If even some military actions have been conducted, then it is the American servicemen who did this. NATO has only run errands," he said.
The agreement envisions that 9 U.S. military bases with 10,000 troops would remain in Afghanistan past 2014, when most of the U.S. servicemen are withdrawn from the country. The document was earlier approved by the Afghan parliament but Karzai put forward some preconditions for its implementation. In particular, the Afghan leader demanded that the U.S. military command should make Taliban members sit at the negotiating table and stop conducting raids in Afghan populated areas.
At the same time, NATO has said that the agreement could be signed by a new Afghan president to be elected in April. Karzai will not run in these elections.
