Monday, November 29, 2010

Kabul says US relations unaffected by Karzai claims

Afghanistan said Monday its relations with the United States would not be affected by leaked cables portraying President Hamid Karzai as weak and paranoid, and his brother as a corrupt drugs baron.

The American diplomatic cables raised the issue of suspected high-level corruption within the Afghan government, long a concern among Western backers who see it as undermining the nine-year war against the Taliban.

Internet whistleblower WikiLeaks has begun releasing a quarter of a million confidential US diplomatic cables, detailing embarrassing and inflammatory episodes in what the White House called a "reckless and dangerous action".

But Karzai's spokesman Waheed Omer told a news conference the leaks "won't have any impact on the strategic relations between the US and Afghanistan".

"We don't see anything substantive in the document that will strain the relationship," Omer told reporters, adding: "We'll wait and see what else comes out before making further comment."

On leaked US criticism of Karzai as an "extremely weak" leader, which follows negative US media reports, Omer said: "Such comments are not new. But the president... will carry on with what he thinks is good for Afghanistan."

US diplomats described Karzai in the documents as "driven by paranoia" and "conspiracy theories".

The leaked cables also reveal American feelings about the president's younger brother Ahmed Wali Karzai, long dogged by claims of unsavoury links with the lucrative opium trade and private security firms, which he denies.

Western officials have kept quiet in public on the tainted record of the president's half brother, who is a powerful figure in Kandahar, where US forces are leading the fight to break the Taliban.

But one note, that followed a meeting between the younger Karzai and US envoy Frank Ruggiero in September 2009, revealed:

"While we must deal with AWK (Ahmed Wali Karzai) as the head of the provincial council, he is widely understood to be corrupt and a narcotics trafficker."

Kandahar is a make-or-break battleground in the US-led fight to defeat the insurgency, and the United States has poured thousands of extra troops into the area to wrest initiative from the Taliban and bolster the Afghan government.

"The meeting with AWK highlights one of our major challenges in Afghanistan: how to fight corruption and connect the people to their government, when the key government officials are themselves corrupt," the report said.

In the 2009 meeting with American and Canadian officials, the president's brother urged the allies not to fund small-scale cash projects -- a cornerstone of its counter-insurgency strategy -- but to build large mega-projects instead.

"Given AWK's reputation for shady dealings, his recommendations for large, costly infrastructure projects should be viewed with a healthy dose of scepticism," the report said.

"We will continue to urge AWK to improve his own credibility gap," said the report, adding that both Ahmed Wali Karzai and Kandahar governor Tooryalai Wesa had tried to influence the awarding of contracts in the province.

Ahmed Wali Karzai also showed disdain for elections in the region, the report said, claiming that local elders were better placed to provide governance.

In a second meeting in February, Ahmed Wali Karzai told Ruggiero that he was willing to take a polygraph test to prove his innocence over claims of his involvement in the opium trade.

"He appears not to understand the level of our knowledge of his activities, and that the coalition views many of his activities as malign, particularly relating to his influence over the police," said the cable.

"We will need to monitor his activity closely."

Another cable from the US embassy in Kabul said former vice president Ahmed Zia Massoud carried 52 million dollars in cash to Dubai last year.

The cable referred to the cash as "a significant amount" that Massoud "was ultimately allowed to keep without revealing the money?s origin or destination," it said.

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