KABUL): US President Barack Obama on Saturday telephoned his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai to discuss US troops’ combat role in Afghan villages.
Karzai on Thursday asked the United States to pull out all its troops from Afghan rural areas and confine them to bases in response to Sunday’s massacre in southern Kandahar province.
He made the appeal at a meeting with US defense secretary Leon Panetta at the Presidential Palace.
Karzai said Afghanistan’s security forces were able to maintain security for villages and that his country was ready to completely shoulder security responsibility.
He demanded a speedy withdrawal of foreign troops, calling the Kandahar attack in which 17 civilians were killed an atrocity against Afghans.
The accused soldier was reportedly flown out of Afghanistan to Kuwait
and later taken to the US.
Pentagon spokesman Capt. John Kirby said the decision to remove him was made because there was no appropriate detention facility inside Afghanistan.
The dead, included nine children and two women, shot dead by a US staff sergeant in the Panjwai district on Sunday, sparking nationwide anger against foreign troops.
A statement issued by the Presidential Palace on Saturday said the two leaders also conferred on security transition from foreign soldiers to Afghan security forces.
Strengthening of Afghan security forces and Afghanistan’s national sovereignty also came under discussion, the palace said.
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