Kabul, January 28: Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai says Afghan forces need five years to take over the country’s security affairs.
“We will be trying our very best to be ready to defend the major part of our country from two to three years and when we reach the five-year end point, that’s when we would be leading,” Karzai said on Wednesday at a meeting with students in London ahead of a 60-nation conference on the war-torn country.
The president is expected to encourage the West to fund a 500-million-dollar program to appease the Taliban. The plan has already won support from the Western allies.
He will also spell out the conditions under which he will conduct reconciliation talks with the Taliban.
The remarks were made as US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry had earlier said Karzai is not “an adequate strategic partner”, adding that the Afghan government has “little to no political will or capacity to carry out basic tasks of governance.”
——Agencies