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20 April 2010
Intense Diplomacy to Strengthen U.S.-Afghan Ties
Washington — Afghan President Hamid Karzai and a large contingent of his senior Cabinet officials will come to Washington in May for meetings aimed at strengthening relations between the United States and Afghanistan, says Ambassador Richard Holbrooke.
Additional meetings and conferences are planned throughout the year, he added. They reflect an intense, strategic diplomacy designed to strengthen relations, expand governance by the Karzai government and maintain international support as the Afghan government grows and the security environment improves, Holbrooke said.
Since the beginning of this year, Holbrooke, who is the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry, U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal and other senior U.S. military officials have held six meetings with Karzai and his senior Cabinet. They met once in London at the international support conference January 28, twice in Munich, Germany, and three times in Kabul.
On April 10, Eikenberry unveiled a $40 million program to improve governance in the southern and eastern regions of Afghanistan most affected by the Taliban insurgency.
“The last meeting we had was the longest, most sustained and most focused, and that was a week ago,” Holbrooke said at an April 19 press briefing in Washington. “It was over two hours long and it was a very serious, substantive meeting.”
Holbrooke said a recent stressful period has passed and the joint U.S.-Afghan work of helping build a new, democratic and stronger Afghanistan is going forward. Karzai had issued critical statements recently about U.S. and other foreign nations’ involvement in Afghanistan.
“In terms of our relationships between us and the government of Afghanistan, we feel they’re in good shape. There was a period where the waters got roiled a little bit, but that period is over,” Holbrooke said. “I base what I said on my personal observations and interactions with President Karzai.”
INTENSIVE DIPLOMACY AHEAD
At the State Department briefing, Holbrooke said the meetings in Washington will run May 10–14, but the majority of the meetings with senior U.S. officials and President Obama will be May 11–13 during a full schedule that will include breakout sessions with counterparts from each nation. The majority of the meetings will be held at the State Department and will be led by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, he said.
Meetings are planned with senior officials from defense, agriculture, justice, law enforcement, and other areas as schedules permit, Holbrooke said. There will be a press conference with Karzai and Clinton following what is expected to be a substantial bilateral session. Meetings are planned around specific topics including rule of law, agriculture and communications.
Obama and Karzai will meet, and Holbrooke said there will be time for meetings with the senior leadership of Congress and sessions with public policy centers in Washington.
“It’s going to be a very, very intense whole-of-government effort involving many members of the U.S. government,” Holbrooke told reporters. “The point I want to give you is that we are taking this trip very seriously.”
Karzai is planning a three-day peace jirga (grand assembly or council) that begins May 20. It is a consultative jirga with tribal and government leaders that had been scheduled before the Washington meetings, but was delayed until after this visit, Holbrooke said. A meeting of 40 foreign envoys to Afghanistan will convene in Madrid in the first week in June, and the United States will be there for that conference, he said.
Following that will be an international conference in Kabul on July 20 that will be hosted by the Karzai government and the international community, including the United Nations.
It will involve a domestic portion and an international portion, and Secretary Clinton plans to attend the international portion, Holbrooke said. “It is the follow-on to the London conference.”
Afghan parliamentary elections are scheduled for September 18, and at some point, either before the elections or shortly after, there will be a trilateral conference of the United States, Afghanistan and Pakistan, he said.
