The Obama administration has quietly stopped demanding that Afghan President Hamid Karzai finalise a stalled security pact within weeks, opening up the possibility that a decision on keeping US and international forces in Afghanistan after this year might not be made until after Karzai's successor is elected this spring.
While US officials say they still strongly prefer that the agreement be signed quickly, they did not rule out the possibility of waiting to see if a new Afghan leader might be easier to work with. Pushing off the decision on keeping troops in Afghanistan comes with increased risks and complications for the US military, though the Pentagon is making adjustments to give President Barack Obama that option.
Karzai's refusal to sign the security pact has strained relations with Washington. He further exacerbated tensions today by releasing 65 militants from a former US prison near Kabul. The American military angrily denounced the move, saying the men are Taliban fighters who will likely return to the battlefield to kill coalition and Afghan forces.
American-led combat operations in Afghanistan are set to end on December 31, but the US is seeking to keep up to 10,000 troops on the ground for counterterrorism and training missions. Without a security agreement setting conditions for the American forces, the White House has said it will remove all US troops at the end of the year.
The White House had hoped Karzai would sign the bilateral security agreement by the end of last year. When that deadline passed, administration officials repeatedly said a deal needed to be signed within "weeks, not months".
But Obama administration officials quietly backed away from that timetable this week. Yesterday, White House spokesman Jay Carney said only that the US wanted the agreement to be signed "promptly" - a purposeful change in rhetoric, a US official said. The official was not authorised to publicly discuss the administration's thinking and insisted on anonymity.
State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf also avoided putting a specific timetable on finalising the agreement, saying that the US position was simply that "it needs to be signed soon."
Karzai has also angered US officials with his increasingly anti-American rhetoric. During remarks today on the prisoner release, Karzai accused the US of "harassing" the Afghan judiciary by criticising the release and said Washington must respect Afghanistan's sovereignty.
"If Afghanistan judiciary authorities decide to release prisoners, it is of no concern to the United States," Karzai said from Turkey, where he is attending a regional summit.
