Afghan Leader

Senior American officials on Sunday sought to smooth over a sharply quarrelsome interlude in U.S.-Afghan relations, with the special U.S. envoy to the region describing President Hamid Karzai's administration as "a government we can work with." Speaking to reporters in Kabul, Richard Holbrooke, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, pointed to Karzai's participation in a major planning conference with Afghan, American and coalition officials. "We have a good relationship with this government," said Holbrooke, who has verbally clashed with Karzai in the past.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday sought to secure help from Pakistani leaders in facilitating peace talks with Pakistan-based Afghan Taliban leaders, while the militant group denied any interest in negotiating with an "impotent" administration. Karzai's visit to Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, came amid reports that he had said in an interview that the U.S. and Afghan governments had begun secret talks with the Afghan Taliban. In recent months, U.S. officials have been meeting with Taliban envoys to discuss the establishment of a Taliban office in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar.

President Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai pledged Tuesday that the assassination of the head of the Afghanistan High Peace Council would not stop them from working toward a peaceful resolution to conflict in that country. But the death of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani cast a dark shadow over the talks in New York, where Obama and Karzai were meeting for the first time since the U.S. announced its schedule for withdrawing military troops from Afghanistan. The meeting took place in the aftermath of what is believed to be a suicide attack on Rabbani, who had been working to negotiate an end to the ongoing war with the Taliban.

  On the face of it, President Hamid Karzai has every motive to do all he can to bring about talks with the Taliban. Instead, the Afghan leader is emerging as a prime impediment to urgent U.S. efforts to jump-start negotiations with the insurgents. Since the start of his second term in office, Karzai has repeatedly declared that his top priority is finding a political settlement to the bloody Afghan conflict and bringing the "disaffected brothers" back into the social and political fold.

Parsing statements by President Hamid Karzai has become something of a parlor game in the Afghan capital. The Afghan leader's office sought Monday to distance him from his controversial remarks in a weekend television interview, in which he asserted that Afghanistan would side with Pakistan in a hypothetical war against the United States. The presidential palace said Karzai's comments to Pakistan's Geo TV, aired Saturday, had been misinterpreted. The remarks came toward the end of a lengthy interview conducted in English and Urdu, in which the Afghan leader repeatedly urged Pakistan to move against Islamic militants who take refuge on its soil, according to a transcript released by Karzai's office.

The Obama administration moved with some unease Monday to recalibrate its relationship with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, who not long ago likened the U.S.-led coalition in his country to an invading force. Karzai is visiting Washington this week with two dozen or more senior members of his government in tow, and the two sides are struggling to forgive, if not forget, mutual hard feelings. He was invited to take part in a working dinner Monday night with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at Blair House, the official state guest house.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday sought to secure help from Pakistani leaders in facilitating peace talks with Pakistan-based Afghan Taliban leaders, while the militant group denied any interest in negotiating with an "impotent" administration. Karzai's visit to Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, came amid reports that he had said in an interview that the U.S. and Afghan governments had begun secret talks with the Afghan Taliban. In recent months, U.S. officials have been meeting with Taliban envoys to discuss the establishment of a Taliban office in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday made an emotional appeal for coalition troops to strive to prevent civilian deaths as a major offensive in the south by U.S., British and Afghan troops entered its second week. The president's remarks, in a speech to Afghan lawmakers, came as Western military officials announced that troops involved in the fighting for the Taliban stronghold of Marja had shot and killed an Afghan man a day earlier, mistakenly believing he was menacing a patrol with a makeshift bomb.

President Hamid Karzai agreed Wednesday to push back a deadline for the shutdown of private security contractors operating in Afghanistan, but the issue still looms as a potentially serious point of contention with donor governments. The dispute, which began in August when Karzai abruptly announced a ban on all private firms providing security in the country, has spotlighted the increasingly fragile and tumultuous relationship between Karzai and his Western patrons. Without private protection, major donors have said they would have no choice but to shut down development projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Afghan leader Najib arrived here Sunday on a surprise visit amid reports of rising Soviet casualties in the war against Afghan guerrillas. The official news agency Tass, reporting his arrival, gave no explanation for Najib's unannounced trip and no details of his schedule in Moscow. He was greeted at the airport by Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze and Anatoly F. Dobrynin, a key Kremlin adviser on foreign policy, Tass reported.

Parsing statements by President Hamid Karzai has become something of a parlor game in the Afghan capital. The Afghan leader's office sought Monday to distance him from his controversial remarks in a weekend television interview, in which he asserted that Afghanistan would side with Pakistan in a hypothetical war against the United States. The presidential palace said Karzai's comments to Pakistan's Geo TV, aired Saturday, had been misinterpreted. The remarks came toward the end of a lengthy interview conducted in English and Urdu, in which the Afghan leader repeatedly urged Pakistan to move against Islamic militants who take refuge on its soil, according to a transcript released by Karzai's office.

For a beleaguered and increasingly isolated Afghan President Hamid Karzai, revelations of an alleged assassination plot hatched in Pakistan and involving one of his own bodyguards are another blow to the prospects for a deal to end the Afghan war. The Afghan government's accusation of a Pakistani link in the alleged assassination plot against the Afghan leader adds new tensions to a cross-border relationship already on edge. Lutfullah Mashal, a spokesman for Afghanistan's main intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security, said the ringleaders of the assassination plot, an Egyptian and a Bangladeshi, were based in Pakistan's tribal areas.

President Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai pledged Tuesday that the assassination of the head of the Afghanistan High Peace Council would not stop them from working toward a peaceful resolution to conflict in that country. But the death of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani cast a dark shadow over the talks in New York, where Obama and Karzai were meeting for the first time since the U.S. announced its schedule for withdrawing military troops from Afghanistan. The meeting took place in the aftermath of what is believed to be a suicide attack on Rabbani, who had been working to negotiate an end to the ongoing war with the Taliban.

A new U.S. commander, Gen. John Allen, formally took control of the war in Afghanistan on Monday, inheriting a nearly decade-long conflict that has cost the lives of at least 1,667 American troops. Allen succeeds Gen. David H. Petraeus, who is leaving to head the CIA. Petraeus had been in command for only a year, hastily taking the helm after President Obama fired Gen. Stanley McChrystal after Rolling Stone magazine reported intemperate comments by his staff about the administration's civilian leadership.

As U.S. commanders prepare to bring home 10,000 troops from Afghanistan by year's end, the drawdown is calling fresh attention to the tangle of woes confronting the administration of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. For much of his second term, which got off to an acrimonious start in 2009 with a fraud-tainted election, the Afghan leader has seemingly lurched from one crisis to the next. But recent weeks have seen an unusual convergence of complex and, in some cases, long-festering problems.

A new dispute over civilian deaths erupted Sunday when Afghan officials claimed an errant NATO airstrike had killed 14 people, women and children among them. Western military officials said the incident in Helmand province, which took place late Saturday, was under investigation. Provincial spokesman Daoud Ahmadi said the airstrike was in apparent retaliation for an insurgent attack against a U.S. Marine base in the district of Now Zad. But he said the compound that was hit contained residential structures.

Afghanistan's interim leader, Hamid Karzai, seems to be the next men's fashion icon. The soft-spoken Pushtun tribal leader, who took office as prime minister last month after the Taliban was toppled, often wears a green and purple striped Uzbek robe along with a lambskin cap. European media reported that Tom Ford, creative director of Gucci, said at a recent show in Milan that Karzai is "the most chic man in the world." "We have achieved things.

Afghan leader Najib said Tuesday that his ruling party would be willing to share some government posts with rebels who have been fighting his regime for the last seven years. In listing the possible ministries available to his armed adversaries, however, Najib omitted the Defense Ministry, secret police and Ministry of Internal Affairs--three bodies that play a controlling role in the Afghan government. He spoke with reporters after holding talks Monday with Soviet leader Mikhail S.

President Hamid Karzai on Wednesday denounced American soldiers who posed for gruesome pictures with Afghan victims of alleged "trophy" killings, calling the deaths cruel and tragic. Addressing the issue publicly for the first time since the graphic images first surfaced this month in the German news magazine Der Spiegel , and more subsequently were revealed by Rolling Stone magazine , the Afghan leader said the photos should stir international indignation — "if there is conscience left in the West.

NATO troops shot and killed a relative of President Hamid Karzai in a nighttime raid in the Afghan leader's home province of Kandahar, family members said Thursday. The incident is expected to exacerbate strained relations between Karzai and the Western military over civilian casualties. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates this week offered a personal apology for the deaths l of nine boys in a helicopter strike by U.S. forces ast week. Karzai had earlier rejected an apology from U.S. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top Western commander in Afghanistan, as insufficient.