Karzai, Bush to meet under pressure over S Korean hostages
Saturday, 4 August 2007
KABUL, Aug 3 (AFP): Afghan President Hamid Karzai is due to meet his US counterpart George W. Bush at the weekend for talks likely to be overshadowed by the Taliban's capture of 21 South Korean aid workers.
South Korea is pressing the United States to intervene in the dragging crisis in which the Islamic hardliners have already killed two of the 23 mostly young, Christian aid workers captured more than two weeks ago.
A top US diplomat said late Thursday there was "potential" for military pressure against the Taliban to try to free them.
The kidnapping highlights increasing insecurity in Afghanistan, one of the main battlegrounds of the US-led "war on terror", nearly six years after the United States led the invasion that toppled the hardline Taliban government.
Karzai, whose departure date is under wraps for security reasons, is due to meet Bush at Camp David-the US presidential retreat in Maryland-Sunday and Monday, his office said.
"The two presidents will spend time discussing issues in an informal setting," Karzai's spokesman Humayun Hamidzada told AFP.
These issues included mounting civilian casualties by international troops in operations against Taliban insurgents, he said.
At least 600 Afghan civilians have been killed in insurgency- linked violence this year, half of them by international forces, according to statistics used by the United Nations.
Many are caused by a US-led and dominated counter-terrorism coalition tasked with hunting down Taliban militants and their Al-Qaeda allies believed to operate along the rugged Afghan- Pakistan border. Some 27,000 US troops are currently in the war- ravaged nation.
Other topics up for discussion are the Afghan government's desire for "ownership" of the nation's reconstruction, an internationally funded process worth billions of dollars, criticised as uncoordinated and often wasteful.
Afghanistan's booming cultivation of opium as well as a meeting between representatives of Afghanistan and Pakistan due this month, called a "peace jirga", were also expected to be addressed, Hamidzada said.
South Korea is pressing the United States to intervene in the dragging crisis in which the Islamic hardliners have already killed two of the 23 mostly young, Christian aid workers captured more than two weeks ago.
A top US diplomat said late Thursday there was "potential" for military pressure against the Taliban to try to free them.
The kidnapping highlights increasing insecurity in Afghanistan, one of the main battlegrounds of the US-led "war on terror", nearly six years after the United States led the invasion that toppled the hardline Taliban government.
Karzai, whose departure date is under wraps for security reasons, is due to meet Bush at Camp David-the US presidential retreat in Maryland-Sunday and Monday, his office said.
"The two presidents will spend time discussing issues in an informal setting," Karzai's spokesman Humayun Hamidzada told AFP.
These issues included mounting civilian casualties by international troops in operations against Taliban insurgents, he said.
At least 600 Afghan civilians have been killed in insurgency- linked violence this year, half of them by international forces, according to statistics used by the United Nations.
Many are caused by a US-led and dominated counter-terrorism coalition tasked with hunting down Taliban militants and their Al-Qaeda allies believed to operate along the rugged Afghan- Pakistan border. Some 27,000 US troops are currently in the war- ravaged nation.
Other topics up for discussion are the Afghan government's desire for "ownership" of the nation's reconstruction, an internationally funded process worth billions of dollars, criticised as uncoordinated and often wasteful.
Afghanistan's booming cultivation of opium as well as a meeting between representatives of Afghanistan and Pakistan due this month, called a "peace jirga", were also expected to be addressed, Hamidzada said.