US pushes for new security pact with Afghanistan: Karzai

Afghan President Hamid Karzai says Washington is pushing his government to sign a security deal with Kabul in three months.

“The Americans are in a hurry to sign it (the agreement) in three months. We are not in a hurry. We are careful,” the British state-run broadcaster BBC quoted Karzai as saying to a session of tribal elders from different provinces on Sunday.

The deal would give foreign forces in Afghanistan immunity from prosecution among other terms.

The Afghan president said he would sign the security deal with the US after considering his country’s interests.

The US and Afghanistan are still negotiating a long-term security agreement under which the American Special Forces will stay in a strategically key province near the capital, beyond their 2014 withdrawal deadline.

The president also revealed that the US has no intention of leaving the Asian country.

In recent weeks, Karzai has made several anti-US remarks and accused Washington of colluding with the Taliban in an attempt to justify its presence in the war-torn Afghanistan.

The Afghan president also banned the US-led foreign forces from entering university campuses.

On March 10, Karzai said that there are “ongoing daily talks between Taliban, American and foreigners in Europe and in the [Persian] Gulf states.”

Referring to two Taliban bombings in Kabul and Khost on March 9, the Afghan president noted that, “Those bombs … were not a show of force to America. They were in service of America. It was in the service of the 2014 slogan to warn us if they (Americans) are not here then Taliban will come.”

Meanwhile a statement from Karzai’s office on Thursday called the US “a friend and strategic partner of Afghanistan” and said that the Afghan president’s recent comments “had been to correct rather than damage this [US-Afghan] relationship.”

The United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan in 2001 under the pretext of fighting terrorism. While the war removed the Taliban from power, insecurity continues to be high across the country.