US defense chief nudges Karzai to name replacements of ‘equal caliber’ for top security posts
By Anne Gearan, APMonday, June 7, 2010
US: Sacking of Afghan officials an internal matter
LONDON — U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates urged Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Monday to replace two top security officials with ministers of “equal caliber,” and said the sacking of the pair does not signal trouble in Karzai’s government over efforts to seek a peace deal with the Taliban.
Gates stepped gingerly in answering questions about the significance of the abrupt resignations Sunday of the two men whom U.S. officials had often singled out by name as examples of competent leadership in a government riven by corruption and patronage.
“It’s obviously an internal matter for the Afghans,” Gates said.
He spoke to reporters en route to London, where the stepped-up military campaign in southern Afghanistan are a major topic of talks with the new British government.
The United States is trying to shore up the international coalition fighting in Afghanistan, and Gates has said he will keep “going around with my hand out” to ask NATO nations and others to send additional forces to serve as trainers for Afghan security forces. Gates said he will not make that request of Britain, which he said has done all that he could have asked.
Gates is the highest-ranking Obama Cabinet member to meet with new Prime Minister David Cameron, and the first to discuss the war effort in depth. Gates spokesman Geoff Morrell gave no details of the war discussion but called the exchange productive. The two also discussed Iran’s nuclear program and the fiscal pressures on both governments, Morrell said.
A Downing Street spokesman said Gates Cameron discussed the outcome of Karzai’s peace conference, or jirga, last week. Karzai said the resignations of the intelligence and interior ministers followed a Taliban attack on the conference last week.
“The prime minister reiterated U.K. support for U.S. strategy,” in Afghanistan, including the gradual transfer of security responsibility to the Afghan government and armed forces, the spokesman said.
The 8-year-old war is increasingly unpopular in Britain, and the new government is considered less invested in the conflict than the Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Britain has more than 9,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, most of them in the volatile Helmand Province.
President Barack Obama and other U.S. officials have said they are not concerned that Britain’s commitment will change. Gates said that based on conversations with the new defense chief, “I’ve had the sense the new British government is quite resolute with respect to Afghanistan.”
The peace session laid groundwork for eventual settlement talks with the Taliban.
“There were some bombings associated with the peace jirga and maybe there was a need for accountability in that respect,” Gates said.
Security officials have rarely faced punishment or resigned over previous major attacks, but Gates was being careful to suggest that Karzai, not the United States, calls the shots in matters of the Afghan government.
Also Monday, Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, said the U.S. held the two dismissed officials in high regard, but “we will work closely with whomever succeeds them.” Holbrooke spoke in Spain.
Associated Press writer Daniel Woolls in Madrid contributed to this report.
Tags: Aboard A U.s. Military Aircraft, Afghanistan, Asia, Barack Obama, Central Asia, England, Europe, London, North America, Political Resignations, United Kingdom, United States, Western Europe
