...

Karzai says United States wants to manipulate him

Other News Materials 8 September 2009 03:28 (UTC +04:00)

Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai has accused the United States of denouncing his friends and family in an effort to undermine his own position and make him more malleable, Reuters reported.

In a wide-ranging interview with Le Figaro daily, released on Monday, Karzai also condemned a NATO airstrike last week on hijacked fuel tankers, and said he supported a mooted shift in U.S. military tactics in Afghanistan.

Karzai, who is closing in on a first-round victory in last month's presidential election, revealed strained relations with the United States and said U.S. criticism of his running mate, Mohammad Qasim Fahim, was actually aimed at him.

"The Americans attack Karzai in an underhand fashion because they want him to be more tractable. They are wrong. It is in their interest ... that Afghanistan's people respect their president," he said, referring to himself in the third person.

"It is in no-one's interest to have an Afghan president who has become an American puppet," he added.

The New York-based watchdog Human Rights Watch has called Fahim one of the most notorious warlords in the country, while Le Figaro said Washington had branded him a drug smuggler.

Karzai also said accusations that his own brother was corrupt were unfounded, adding that the United States embassy in Kabul had twice failed to answer his written requests for proof.

"That said, I am not going to deny that there is a serious problem of corruption in the heart of our administration. My priority is to fight that. But I am also going to ask for more transparency from our foreign partners," he said.

Latest

Latest