Afghan elders to decide on immunity for US troops: Hamid Karzai

Kabul: Afghan elders will decide on the key issue of whether American soldiers remaining in the country after 2014 will be granted immunity from prosecution, President Hamid Karzai said.

US President Barack Obama warned last week that no American troops would remain behind in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of NATO forces in 2014 unless they were granted immunity from prosecution in local courts.

Obama, planning to withdraw most of the 66,000 US troops left in Afghanistan, said that after 2014 American forces would have a “very limited” mission in training Afghan forces and preventing a return of Al-Qaeda.

Karzai said that after 2014, US troops would be in Afghanistan “in small numbers, very, very small numbers like in Germany, Turkey or South Korea, like in Japan”.

Their presence would be based on an agreement which could take eight to nine months to finalise he said, adding that the US proposals were not yet acceptable.