Afghanistan Times
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AT Monitoring Desk-KABUL: Criticizing the United States for snail’s pace counter terrorism efforts, the former president Hamid Karzai said that Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) with the US is meaningless if there was no peace in the country.
“At a time when there is no peace, inking the security pact with the US doesn’t benefit Afghanistan,” Karzai told Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency (FNA) on Wednesday.
“We had demanded the US to start the process of peace in Afghanistan more serious and tangible and if the US acted upon its undertakings and the Afghanistan peace process, we would consider the security pact as fruitful,” FNA quoted him.
Referring to the growing insecurity in the country despite presence of the US-led coalition troops, the former Afghan president said that security situation in Afghanistan was deteriorating day by day despite presence of the US troops, aimed at fighting terrorism and extremism. He said that hopes for return of peace and stability in Afghanistan “faded out”.
In September 2014, high-ranking Afghan and American officials inked the long-delayed BSA to allow the US troops to stay in Afghanistan after the end of the year, filling a campaign promise by President Muhammad Ashraf Ghani.
Karzai had long refused to agree to the deal, souring his ties with the Obama administration. The ex-president cited his anger over civilian deaths and his belief that the war was not fought in the interests of his country.
