KABUL (AFP) — President Hamid Karzai demanded at a meeting with a UN Security Council team Tuesday that the international community set a "timeline" for ending military intervention in Afghanistan, his office said.
Karzai told a delegation from the Council that his country needed to know how long the US-led "war on terror" was going to be fought in Afghanistan or it would have to seek a political solution to a Taliban-led insurgency.
A US-led invasion ousted the extremist Islamic Taliban regime in 2001 and launched the "war on terror" which has brought nearly 70,000 mainly Western troops to Afghanistan, most of them under a UN Security Council mandate.
US President-elect Barack Obama has said that Afghanistan would be a priority for his government and campaigned on a pledge to shift US forces from Iraq to Afghanistan with around 4,000 due in January.
"The international community should give us a timeline of how long or how far the 'war on terrorism' will go," Karzai's chief spokesman Homayun Hamidzada cited the president as telling the delegation.
"If we don't have a clear idea of how long it will be, the Afghan government has no choice but to seek political solutions," he told AFP, adding this included "starting to talk to Taliban and those opposing the government."
The delegation -- which includes the US ambassador to the United Nations, Afghan-born Zalmay Khalilzad -- arrived Monday on a fact-finding mission with security in Afghanistan at its weakest since the ouster of the Taliban.
Karzai, due to stand for re-election next year, has been pushing for talks with insurgents as a way to end the spiralling violence, but only those who renounce links with Al-Qaeda and accept the post-Taliban constitution.
The insurgents have in turn demanded the withdrawal of foreign troops.
A statement released after the meeting said Karzai had told the 15 UN ambassadors and representatives that Afghans were "not hopeful for the future" because of the poor security situation.
"The president emphasised that Afghanistan is committed to the war against Al-Qaeda and those Taliban who take orders from outside," it said, referring to extremist bases across the border in Pakistan.
"But we will talk with those Taliban who for various reasons have joined the opposition and are not against the Afghan constitution," the statement said.
Karzai was also critical of the situation that sees the Taliban controlling a number of districts in provinces with large numbers of international soldiers.
"We need to ensure the Afghan government is in control of its entire territory," Hamidzada said. "Having pockets of territory like in southern Afghanistan and Helmand under Taliban control is unacceptable."
Helmand, where British forces are in charge, is a stronghold of the Taliban. Insurgents are also said to hold areas in other provinces such as Ghazni and Wardak, close to the capital.
Karzai also repeated to the UN group his demands that the international forces stop causing civilian casualties in their operations against insurgents and focus their efforts on militant bases in Pakistan, his spokesman said.
"He emphasised that the 'war on terror' cannot be fought in Afghan villages.
"It must be taken to (militant) sanctuaries and safe havens. That is why we are having civilian casualties -- because we are ignoring the source of the problem," Hamidzada said.
A report to the UN Security Council in September said security had "deteriorated markedly" in Afghanistan with more incidents stemming from militants from Pakistan.
In new clashes, the US military said Tuesday it had killed six militants and detained 12 in operations Monday.
The Afghan defence ministry reported that insurgents had killed four Afghan construction workers in Helmand.
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