Kabul: The massacre of 16 Afghan civilians by a US soldier has not derailed talks on a pact with Washington which would allow some US forces to stay in Afghanistan after a 2014 withdrawal deadline, a senior Afghan official said on Sunday.
Washington and Kabul have been holding discussions for more than a year on keeping some US special forces and advisers in the country - a highly sensitive topic for Afghans embittered by continued civilians deaths and more than a decade of war.
Relations between the two countries hit a new low when a US soldier walked off his base in the southern province of Kandahar a week ago and gunned down villagers. After meeting the families of victims, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said he was at "the end of the rope" with Western countries.
But a senior Afghan official told Reuters anger over the killings had not wrecked or even delayed the negotiations.
Both sides still hoped to sign their Strategic Partnership Agreement before a May summit in Chicago on long-term Western backing for Afghan security forces, the official said.
"The talks have been going on and have not been affected by Kandahar incident," the official said on condition of anonymity. "The fundamental pillars of friendship between the US and Afghanistan are still intact," the official added.
Karzai's spokesman told Afghanistan's Tolo Television on Sunday that US and Afghan officials were also still discussing the possibility of having permanent US military bases in Afghanistan, another highly sensitive issue.
"There are still some ambiguous points that the US needs to clarify to the Afghan government. When those points are clarified, the establishment of US military bases will be agreed by signing a defensive document," Karzai's spokesman Aimal Faizi told Tolo.
That document would be separate from the Strategic Partnership Agreement, he added.
Afghanistan is demanding US troops stop all night-time raids on Afghan homes as a precondition of signing any agreement. Faizi said talks on that demand would start soon.
Before the Kandahar killings, relations between the United States and Afghanistan had already been strained by a series of blunders, including the inadvertent burning of copies of the Koran at a NATO base last month.
The Taliban has promised to continue fighting until all foreign troops leave the country. Most NATO combat troops are due to leave by the end of 2014.
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