Tuesday, August 6, 2013
Kabul (BNA) In the view of the controversies over signing of Afghan-US Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA), the presidential office on Saturday announced that Washington is putting excessive pressures to get the agreement signed as quickly as possible.
However, the government of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan has made it clear that until the US government does not accept the preconditions set by the Afghan Govt. Afghanistan will not ink the security pact with the United States.
Off late, the US government has been repeatedly stressing on signing the agreement and has set a deadline (October) to ink it.
In response to this, the Afghan government has made it clear that the signing solely depends on the acceptance of Kabul’s terms and conditions by Washington.
“Afghanistan is willing to sign the BSA, but it has some conditions which need to be accepted.
The US is in a hurry to sign the agreement, deadline is not important for us, what matters to us is that our demands must be accepted,” said Fayeq Wahidi, President Karzai’s deputy spokesman.
Meanwhile, the Taliban recently released a statement and said that the BSA even after it is signed has no legal validity.
Earlier on Friday, James Dobbins, US Special Representative to Afghanistan, at a press conference said that the US is keen to reinitiate negotiations over the agreement as quickly as possible.
He urged Afghanistan to sign the BSA before campaigning begins for the upcoming Presidential vote.
“On the BSA, we are hopeful that this could be concluded soon.
We have not had any formal talks on it, but, informal discussions have continued.
There are few issues left but we think these issues can be settled relatively quickly and so we continue to be hopeful that this will be concluded the next month or two,” said Mr. Dobbins. The comments from Mr. Dobbins came in after John Kerry; US Secretary of State had expressed his confidence on inking the BSA.
It is being speculated that both parties have already agreed on some controversial articles of the BSA.
Prior to this, the US had set a two-month deadline for signing the security agreement.
Political commentators believe that the US by pushing the Afghan government to sign the agreement before the election campaigns, is an effort to save the agreement from being used as a tool to campaign in the elections.
