KABUL — Afghan President Hamid Karzai will continue to defy U.S. threats to walk away from a security agreement between the two countries and plans to reiterate in a speech to a grand council Sunday that he will not sign it before spring, his spokesman said Saturday.
“They have waited this long, they can certainly wait five more months,” said spokesman Aimal Faizi on Saturday of the Americans.
The Obama administration has characterized the deal, whose terms Karzai agreed to last week, as a “final offer” that must be completed by the end of this year.
Karzai appears certain the administration is bluffing, saying through the spokesman that he does not think the U.S. will resort to the “zero option” of canceling plans to leave behind a residual force to train the Afghan military and continue counterterrorism operations after it withdraws its combat forces in December 2014.
But the administration, for its part, had also thought Karzai would change his tune after opening the assembly of more than 2,500 tribal elders and other leaders, called a loya jirga, Thursday with a speech vowing to delay finalizing the deal until after Afghanistan’s presidential election in April.
The tension has escalated into a remarkable stare-down between two leaders who say they want the same thing — U.S. troops providing long-term training and support for the Afghan military — but find themselves on the brink of walking away from the partnership.
“The core of the issue,” Faizi said, is a “lack of trust” between the two governments.
As the game of diplomatic chicken neared a climax, the Obama administration was publicly silent Saturday, while continuing talks in private.
U.S. officials in Washington said they were heartened by statements coming out of the loya jirga, where some members seemed to “understand the importance of signing sooner rather than later,” said a senior administration official who was not authorized to discuss the tense situation and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The officials pointed in particular to a statement Saturday by Sebghattulah Mojaddidi, the chairman of the loya jirga, who told Afghanistan’s Tolonews that he hopes Karzai will avoid a showdown with the Americans over the timetable, saying it would harm Afghanistan.
“If the U.S. has accepted our terms, then we should not delay,” Mojaddidi said.
Other jirga members have spoken out in opposition to particular portions of the deal, including a grant of immunity from Afghan legal prosecution for U.S. troops.
In recent days, Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel have signaled that the administration has little patience for a delay or for any substantive changes in the document.
Having drawn a line in the sand after a year of negotiations, the administration is also highly reluctant to suffer a repeat of the diplomatic embarrassment that ensued when a similar deal with Iraq went to the wire before ending with a total U.S. military withdrawal at the end of 2011.
