US envoy to meet Afghan president

[February 14, 2009]  KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- President Barack Obama's new envoy to Afghanistan met with the Afghan foreign minister on Saturday, hours ahead of a planned meeting with President Hamid Karzai that comes amid a downturn in U.S.-Afghan relations.

Karzai says he still has not spoken with Obama almost a month after his inauguration, a sign the Afghan president no longer enjoys the favored status he had under former President George W. Bush.

"There is tension between us and the U.S. government on issues of civilian casualties, arrests of Afghans, nightly raids on homes and the casualties they cause," Karzai told al-Jazeera television in an interview Friday.

Obama has said the U.S. will increase its attention on Afghanistan under his tenure as the U.S. transitions out of Iraq. But the administration is still debating how to stem the Taliban tide and tackle the endemic corruption in Karzai's government more than seven years after the 2001 invasion.

Taliban militants have increased attacks and swept up wide areas of countryside over the last three years. The U.S. is contemplating sending up to 30,000 more American forces to back up the 33,000 already in Afghanistan.

Richard Holbrooke, Obama's new envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, has met with Afghan lawmakers and officials, international military leaders and U.N. diplomats during a fact-finding trip that began Thursday.

Holbrooke on Saturday met with Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta and was to meet later with Karzai. Holbrooke has made no public comments during the Afghan leg of his trip. He previously visited Pakistan and also is to stop in India.

Karzai in recent weeks has publicly pressed the U.S. to use Afghan troops on nighttime raids in order to prevent civilian casualties. Karzai's public criticism of the raids and the civilian deaths caused by U.S. troops has added to recent tensions in the U.S.-Afghan relationship.

The U.S. military and Afghan Defense Ministry announced Thursday that Afghan officials and troops would take greater part in U.S. missions, particularly night raids.

"There will be better coordination to minimize risk of civilian casualties and ensure Afghans search Afghan homes and conduct arrest operations," a joint U.S.-Afghan statement said. It wasn't yet clear how soon Afghans would be placed on those missions.

U.S. Special Operations Forces conduct targeted night raids against known militant leaders, but the operations have resulted in many Afghan civilian deaths, an issue that has increasingly angered Karzai.

The specially trained U.S. forces typically enter Afghan villages at night and call out for their target to surrender. But innocent villagers often try to defend their neighbors' homes from what they fear are Taliban attackers or hostile tribesmen, and the U.S. forces end up killing innocent Afghans.

In the latest violence, three separate roadside bombs killed seven police and a government official in a spate of attacks around Afghanistan, officials said.

A bomb in Khost province on Saturday killed the chief government official in Nadir Shah Kot district. A day earlier, a bomb elsewhere in Khost killed three border police while four policeman were killed by a roadside bomb in Kandahar province to the south.

Taliban militants frequently target Afghan police in their attacks. Police have less training and carry fewer weapons than the Afghan army or U.S. or NATO troops. Close to 900 police have died in militant attacks in each of the last two years.

[Associated Press; By JASON STRAZIUSO]

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