White House May Cancel Obama Meeting With Karzai

3 years ago

0 Comments Say Something »

Text Size

Correspondent

The White House is signaling it might cancel next month's meeting between President Obama and Hamid Karzai, after recent anti-Western statements by the Afghan president.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the planned meeting was still scheduled for May 12. However Gibbs later said that "we certainly would evaluate . . . continued or further remarks" by Karzai before deciding whether it's "constructive to have such a meeting," The Washington Post reported.

In a speech Thursday, Karzai claimed the United Nations and other foreigners tried to fix the recent disputed presidential election, either to prevent him from serving a second term, or to tarnish his victory.

He later called Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to "clarify" his remarks, which he said were misinterpreted.

Then over the weekend reports emerged that Karzai had twice threatened to quit politics and join the Taliban if Western nations continued to pressure him to enact reforms. Karzai's office denied the president had made those comments.

Filed Under: Obama Administration, Afghanistan

Tagged: Afghanistan, Daily Guidance, DailyGuidance, Hamid Karzai, HamidKarzai, Obama Administration, ObamaAdministration

Our New Approach to Comments

In an effort to encourage the same level of civil dialogue among Politics Daily’s readers that we expect of our writers – a “civilogue,” to use the term coined by PD’s Jeffrey Weiss – we are requiring commenters to use their AOL or AIM screen names to submit a comment, and we are reading all comments before publishing them. Personal attacks (on writers, other readers, Nancy Pelosi, George W. Bush, or anyone at all) and comments that are not productive additions to the conversation will not be published, period, to make room for a discussion among those with ideas to kick around. Please read our Help and Feedback section for more info.