Kerry makes progress on US troops withdrawal deal during Kabul visit

The US secretary of state and the Afghanistan president began talks over long-delayed deal on the future of US forces in Afghanistan.

John Kerry (right) arrives for a second meeting with Afghan president Hamid Karzai at the presidential palace in Kabul. Jacquelyn Martin / AP

KABUL // John Kerry and Hamid Karzai extended talks on Saturday as part of a last-ditch effort to negotiate a security pact that would determine how many US troops stay in Afghanistan after 2014.

The US secretary of state and the Afghanistan president began talks on Friday over a long-delayed deal on the future of US forces.

“There are still issues we are finalising, therefore there is a need for a third round of talks this evening,” the president’s spokesman, Aimal Faizi, told reporters.

Talks had hit a wall over two sticking points that the United States hopes will be ironed out by the end of the month, a deadline previously set for signing the deal.

Mr Karzai said this week that he was prepared to walk away from negotiations on the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA), which would allow some US troops to stay in the country after 2014.

The United States has pressed for the pact to be signed within weeks so that the US-led Nato military coalition can schedule its withdrawal of 87,000 combat troops by December 2014.

“The tone was constructive throughout the entire conversation,” a US official told reporters after meetings late on Friday. “It is fair to say that the differences that exist were narrowed on the vast of majority of the outstanding issues.”

The Afghan government has previously said the sticking points were US demands for the right to conduct unilateral military operations against militants, and how the US would pledge to protect Afghanistan.

Negotiations between Mr Kerry and Mr Karzai came as the US said it had captured a senior leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Latif Mehsud, who is being held in Afghanistan, according to the Pentagon.

“I can confirm that US forces did capture ... terrorist leader Latif Mehsud in a military operation,” State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf said, describing him as a senior commander in the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).

Pentagon officials said Mehsud was still inside Afghanistan.

“As part of the armed conflict against Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces ... Mehsud was captured and is being lawfully held by US military forces in Afghanistan,” said the Pentagon spokeswoman Commander Elissa Smith.

The Washington Post reported Mehsud was seen by Afghanistan as a possible go-between in the struggling peace efforts between Kabul and the Afghan Taliban, and that Mr Karzai was angered by Mehsud’s capture.

Mr Karzai officially suspended security talks in June in a furious reaction to the Taliban opening a liaison office in Qatar that was presented as an embassy for a government in waiting.

He has said he refuses to be rushed into signing any security deal, and would first seek approval from a traditional grand assembly of tribal leaders to be convened in about month’s time.

The agreement would see a few thousand US troops remain in Afghanistan to train local forces and target Al Qaeda remnants.

* Agence France-Presse