Kabul: Afghan president Hamid Karzai said the United States should bring peace to his country before he would sign a security deal enabling American troops to stay beyond 2014, despite calls by an assembly of tribal elders to agree to the pact.
The Loya Jirga voted in favor of a security deal with Washington that would allow US troops to stay in Afghanistan beyond 2014 to train national security forces, a deputy speaker of the assembly told the media. The assembly is made up of 2,500 elders, tribal leaders and other influential figures in Afghanistan.
“Given the current situation in, and Afghanistan’s need… the contents of this agreement as a whole is endorsed by the members of this Loya Jirga,” Fazul Karim Imaq, a deputy of the loya jirga said, reading a declaration reached at the end of the four-day grand meeting.
“The loya jirga requests the president to sign the agreement before the end of 2013,” Imaq said.
President Karzai said he would not sign the deal immediately and that the US needed to bring peace to Afghanistan before any agreement was reached.
“If there is no peace then this agreement will bring misfortune to Afghanistan,” Karzai said in an address to the Loya Jirga. “Peace is our precondition. America should bring us peace and then we will sign it.”
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