U.S. envoy has meeting with Karzai

KABUL (AP) — President Barack Obama’s new envoy to Afghanistan met with President Hamid Karzai on Saturday amid a downturn in U.S.-Afghan relations and an upswing in militant violence.

Karzai says he still has not spoken with Obama almost a month after his inauguration, a sign the Afghan president no longer enjoys the favored status he had under former President George W. Bush.

“There is tension between us and the U.S. government on issues of civilian casualties, arrests of Afghans, nightly raids on homes and the casualties they cause,” Karzai told al-Jazeera television in an interview Friday.

Obama has said the U.S. will increase its attention on Afghanistan under his tenure as the U.S. transitions out of Iraq. But the administration is still debating how to stem the Taliban tide and tackle the endemic corruption in Karzai’s government more than seven years after the 2001 invasion.

Taliban militants have increased attacks and swept up wide areas of countryside over the last three years. The U.S. is contemplating sending up to 30,000 additional American forces to back up the 33,000 already in Afghanistan.

Richard Holbrooke, Obama’s new envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, met with Karzai at the heavily guarded presidential palace in central Kabul on Saturday. Neither Holbrooke nor Karzai made any public statements, but the two scheduled a joint news conference for today.

Holbrooke earlier met with Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta, whose spokesman said Holbrooke reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to the anti-terrorism fight, reconstruction projects and the training of Afghan forces.