[Pak Daily Times] Afghanistan will not be bullied into signing a security pact allowing US troops to stay on after next year, President Hamid Maybe I'll join the TalibanKarzai
... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a
Pashtunface on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use...
said as he pressed India on Friday for more military hardware.
Karzai met Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid at the start of a three-day visit, with the United States hoping New Delhi can persuade him to ink the troubled pact.
India-educated Karzai has close ties with India, which is keen to ensure that the exit of some 75,000 US-led NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Originally it was a mutual defense pact directed against an expansionist Soviet Union. In later years it evolved into a mechanism for picking the American pocket while criticizing the cut of the American pants...
troops at the end of 2014 does not trigger a return to power of the hardline Taliban militia.
But speaking to Indian television, Karzai said he would not be "intimidated" into signing the pact which would allow 12,000 US troops to stay in Afghanistan after 2014 and sets out their terms of engagement.
"Aggressive rhetoric won't work... We are not a nation that is known for giving into intimidation," he told NDTV. "If they have not recognised this they should, it will be good for them to recognise... We will sign it when we feel sure that our signature will bring peace and security."