KABUL members on Sunday demanded details of an unusually long and testy telephonic conversation between President Hamid Karzai and US Secretary of State John Kerry should be shared with the legislature and the nation.
Karzai and Kerry recently had harsh exchanges on the issue of reconciliation between the Afghan government and the Taliban, an official said on Friday.
During the hour-long telephonic conversation, Karzai made clear the Afghans would never allow their country’s return to instability and anarchy, the official said on condition of anonymity.
While acknowledging the need for national reconciliation, Karzai said his nation’s genuine desire for peace should not be misused as a tool of facilitating the achievement of outsiders’ nefarious designs.
Another senior official familiar with the unusually long phone conversation confided to Pajhwok Afghan News the discussion hotted up when Kerry tended to intercede with the president on behalf of the Taliban.
Mohammad Daud Hasas, an upper house member from southern Zabul province, said the contents of the conversation should be shared with the nation and its representatives.
Hasas claimed he also had information that Kerry supported the Taliban during talks with the president. “In both cases, the president should make clear to the nation whether or not the US is supportive of the Taliban.”
His colleague from eastern Kunar, Rafiullah Haideri, believed the US should clearly back the Afghan government, not the Taliban. Kerry had insisted on the opening of a Taliban office in Qatar, he said. The Presidential Palace should brief the house on the conversation, he demanded.
Lawmaker Zalmai Zabuli remarked the US was treating Afghanistan as an aggressor. He said it was after the US deployment to Afghanistan that its security deteriorated and its relations with neighbours nosedived, resulting in the creation of several insurgent groups.
Zabuli alleged Kerry had warned Karzai over the opening of the Taliban’s political bureau in Doha.“The president should talk openly what the US wants from Afghanistan,” he said.
Similar views were expressed by other MPs. Senate chairman Fazl Hadi Muslimyar remarked Afghanistan was not a country under occupation and would not meet every demand of foreigners.
He also called on the president to provide details of his conversation with Kerry. Muslimyar tasked the foreign affairs commission to find the details of the Karzai-Kerry talks and report back to the house.
The topic changed when a female lawmaker from western Farah province, Balqis Roshan, asked her colleagues not to take part in gatherings marking anniversaries of Iranian leaders.
She said Afghans were being executed in Iran on a daily basis while Iranian nationals celebrated the anniversaries of their leaders in Afghanistan. She said every MP who took part in such gatherings had betrayed the blood of Afghans shed in Iran.
The furious MP said the Afghan youth had the right to burn Iranian leaders’ portraits and stage anti-Iran protests, a reference to Karzai’s recent address in which he said it was inappropriate to torch such pictures.
ma/mud
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