Karzai and Obama to talk for first time since inauguration

Presidents Hamid Karzai and Barack Obama spoke on the phone for the first time, exactly four weeks after Obama’s inauguration, Karzai’s office said today.

The two presidents spoke about security issues and Afghanistan’s presidential elections in August, Karzai’s office said. Obama called the Afghan leader Tuesday, the same day Obama announced he was deploying an additional 17,000 US forces to Afghanistan to bolster the 33,000 already in the country.

Karzai admitted last week that close to a month after Obama’s inauguration he still had not spoken with the US leader. Karzai spoke with former President George W. Bush regularly, fuelling speculation that Obama was sending a clear signal that Karzai’s standing with him was much lower.

The Afghan president also said there was tension in the US-Afghan relationship, mostly over civilian casualties.

But last weekend Obama’s special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, met Karzai for talks in Kabul, and Karzai’s spokesman Humayun Hamidzada said those discussions were a big step toward a strengthening of relations.

Obama’s decision to send 17,000 more troops answers commanders’ requests for more forces to battle an increasingly violent Taliban insurgency. Militants attacks have risen in the last three years and insurgents now control wide areas of the countryside.