Hamid Karzai says he will sign deal defining the country's long-term relationship with America
Afghan President Hamid Karzai said on Sunday he would meet western demands to sign by May a much-delayed pact defining the country's long-term relationship with the US, but the agreement may not initially establish the size or location of US forces remaining in Afghanistan.
Karzai was speaking at an event in Kabul before news reached the capital that a US soldier had shot dead 16 Afghan civilians, most of them women and children, on a night-time killing spree outside his base in southern Afghanistan.
In the speech to mark International Women's Day, which fell on the Afghan weekend, he said the US and its allies would provide $4.1bn a year in support for Afghanistan's security forces after their own combat forces leave in 2014.
That figure has been tentatively agreed by Karzai and his backers as the cost of supporting the country's army and police.
"The $4.1bn is what is believed will be the annual cost of ANSF (Afghan national security force) sustainment post-2014," said a western official, who declined to be named.
"The Afghans have in fact pledged that GIRoA (the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan) will pay $500m of that amount annually, with donor and coalition nations making up the rest."
Karzai recently reached a last-minute deal with the US military to hand over the sprawling Bagram prison to Afghan control, removing one of the key obstacles to agreeing a strategic partnership deal that has stalled for months.
US and Afghan officials will now move on to the other main block: controversial night-time operations to capture or kill insurgents. Karzai has said they must end before Kabul will sign off on the strategic partnership, but western generals say the war is lost without them.
The west is keen to have a partnership in place before a Nato conference to be held in Chicago in May, expected to formally seal support for Afghanistan after 2014. A deal to keep forces in Afghanistan would allow western leaders to argue that the funding is not a one-way flow of cash but provides a critical benefits for their own national security.
"We have agreed to sign the strategic pact before the Chicago summit," Karzai said.
However, the pact will not initially seal key issues such as agreement on bases the US can use in Afghanistan and how many troops will be stationed there.
"Discussions about the use of Afghan military facilities … in Afghanistan will happen one year after the pact is signed," Karzai said.