Kerry delivers warning to Karzai

KABUL, Afghanistan – The Obama administration on Tuesday delivered what might be its toughest warning yet to President Hamid Karzai over corruption in his government, but chose a messenger who in the past has managed to forge a rapport with the mercurial Afghan leader in times of tension.

Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, flew in for a one-day visit to the Afghan capital that included two sessions with Karzai, whose relations with the United States have plunged to a low not seen since last summer’s fraud-riddled presidential election.

Karzai and the West are in the midst of a confrontation over his efforts to assert control over two Afghan bodies set up with U.S. backing to combat high-level graft and fraud. The dispute burst into the open last month after a senior aide to Karzai was targeted in a bribery investigation.

Karzai has stopped short of trying to shut down or significantly restrict the activities of the Major Crimes Task Force and the Sensitive Investigative Unit. But he has hinted he may seek to do so, a prospect that has caused deep concern among his Western patrons.

Prior to an evening meeting with the Afghan president, Kerry told reporters he would lay down specific benchmarks that Karzai would need to meet in order to demonstrate that he was making good-faith efforts to combat corruption.

Kerry also suggested that Karzai would receive a blunt message about congressional restiveness over the war, which is increasingly fueled by the corruption issue.

“I think President Karzai understands that this is an important moment,” he said. “It is going to be vital that the president lead, over these next months, a very public, tangible, accountable effort to be providing the best governance to the people.”

However, Kerry also telegraphed willingness to listen to the Afghan leader’s grievances, which could help provide a face-saving way out of the impasse. He also made a point of framing Karzai’s objections to the work of the anti-corruption units in sympathetic terms.

Karzai has said the task forces’ methods, which included an early-morning raid on the home of the aide suspected of bribery, were a possible violation of human rights. Kerry said Karzai might have a point.

“I think in America, people would object to a 5 o’clock-in-the-morning gunpoint arrest process,” he said.

Last October, Kerry managed to avert a crisis when Karzai balked at accepting the findings of a U.N.-backed panel that stripped him of one-third of his votes in the presidential election, depriving him of the majority he would have needed to win the balloting outright.

In marathon meetings that included long walks around the grounds of the presidential palace, Kerry talked the Afghan president into agreeing to a runoff with his nearest rival, Abdullah Abdullah.

In the end, Abdullah dropped out of the race, but Kerry’s intercession was credited with staving off a rupture between the West and Karzai that could have precipitated a chaotic domestic power struggle.