Karzai threatens to join Taliban

The consistent anti-US rhetoric by the Afghan President has left US scratching its head.

Reiterating that it is “troubled” by the anti-US rhetoric of Afghan President Hamid Karzai,a top Obama Administration official has said that his threat to join Taliban is a bit of a head scratcher.

The White House has also expressed its frustration at the sudden burst of anti-US statements by Karzai.

“That particular comment is a bit of a head scratcher.

But beyond that,we were troubled by some of his comments last week. We think we have addressed them. We are moving forward,” Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs P J Crowley told reporters at his daily news briefing.

“We want to see the Government of Afghanistan step up,take responsibility in key areas,demonstrate the kind of leadership that the Afghan people are expecting of it. We are there in Afghanistan because it is in our national interest to do so,” he said.

“We are obviously spending significant resources both on the military side and the civilian side to do that. But there are clearly things that we want to see the government step up and do,and we are working with President Karzai and his government to see that happen,” Crowley said.

Remarks by the State Department official and that of the White House came after a series of anti-US rhetoric from Karzai.

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Karzai,first blamed the foreign forces for alleged fraud in last year’s presidential elections and then he threatened to join the Taliban if his voices were ignored. He also alleged that the West was meddling in Afghanistan’s internal affairs.

“The remarks are genuinely troubling. The substance of the remarks – as have been looked into by many – are obviously not true. We will continue to work with President Karzai and others in the Afghan leadership to take the steps that are necessary to ensure that our military and ISAF make security gains that the governance structure is in place to hold those gains,” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said.

He said that the scheduled May 12 White House meeting between the US President Barack Obama and Karzai is still on. Obama,who made an unscheduled trip to Kabul last month,had a productive meeting with the Afghan President.

“President Karzai is the democratically-elected leader of Afghanistan and we will continue to work with him and others to meet the benchmarks that we feel they have to meet in order to ensure the security of the Afghan people.

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We have established – and part of the discussion the President had with President Karzai a little over a week ago was to reiterate some of those benchmarks,” Gibbs said.