KABUL, 14 April 2005 — Afghan President Hamid Karzai said yesterday he wants his war-shattered country to have a permanent security relationship with the United States but stopped short of calling for full-time American bases. Karzai told a joint press conference with visiting US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that Afghanistan would present its suggestions for “permanent and strong” links to US President George W. Bush.
The Afghan people wanted “a sustained economic and political relationship, and most importantly of all, a strategic security relationship to help Afghanistan defend itself,” Karzai said. The United States helped topple the Taleban in late 2001 and leads a coalition of around 18,000 troops who are battling remnants of the regime and Al-Qaeda-linked militants along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Rumsfeld said the US military’s relationship between Afghanistan and the United States had “grown and strengthened,” but he avoided the issue of whether Washington hoped to establish permanent military bases.
“What we generally do when we work with another country (is) we find ways we can be helpful, maybe training, equipment or other types of assistance,” the US defense secretary said. “We think in terms of what we are doing rather than the question of military bases and that type of thing,” said Rumsfeld.
The United States is currently looking to establish a flexible military presence in the strategic Central Asian region that includes Afghanistan, US officials said. Most of the US troops in Afghanistan are either based at Bagram air base north of Kabul or at Kandahar air base, which the US uses to launch raids against insurgents still active in the south and east of the country.
US military officials in Afghanistan said last month that they would spend $83 million on upgrading the two air bases, a move widely seen as a step towards building permanent facilities.
The US also has an operating base at the old Soviet airport of Shindand in the western province of Herat near the Iranian border, and a forward operating base at Salerno in the southeast of the country, not far from Pakistan.
