Afghanistan’s president Hamid Karzai has called for Nato troops to leave Afghan villages and confine themselves to major bases after the slaughter of 16 civilians by a US soldier, underscoring fury over the massacre and clouding US exit plans.
In a near-simultaneous announcement, the Afghan Taliban said it was suspending nascent peace talks with the United States seen as a strong chance to end the country’s decade-long conflict, blaming “shaky, erratic and vague” US statements.
Mr Karzai, in a statement after meeting US defence secretary Leon Panetta in Kabul, said that as a consequence of the weekend massacre in Kandahar, “international security forces have to be taken out of Afghan village outposts and return to [larger] bases”.
Earlier yesterday, a senior US general defended moving the American soldier accused of the Kandahar village killings to a military detention centre in Kuwait, saying it would help ensure a proper investigation and trial.
Furious Afghan civilians and members of parliament have demanded that he be tried in Afghanistan over the shooting, one of the worst of its kind since US-backed Afghan forces toppled the Taliban in late 2001.
In the latest attack, a roadside bomb killed 13 Afghan civilians, including women and children, and wounded two in the south of the country, provincial officials said yesterday. – (Reuters)