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US Has Yet to Meet Conditions to Extend Stay in Afghanistan – Ex-President

© Sputnik / Alexei Druzhinin / Go to the mediabankFormer Afghan President Hamid Karzai
Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai - Sputnik International
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Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai said that United States has not yet fulfilled two major conditions in order to remain on Afghan soil beyond 2016.

Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai - Sputnik International
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MOSCOW (Sputnik) The United States has not yet fulfilled two major conditions in order to remain on Afghan soil beyond 2016, former Afghan President Hamid Karzai told Sputnik on Thursday.

"If America wants to stay beyond 2016 and 2017, they must make sure that two conditions are fulfilled, one — they support and strengthen the unity of Afghanistan people, two — they not in any way try to subvert our sovereignty to Pakistani control," Karzai said.

"They have not fulfilled that yet," he added.

Afghanistan would like to rebuild its military strength to the level that the Soviet Union helped it build in the past, former Afghan President said.

"The problem is the purpose of the Afghan army — the Afghan army to be like a gendarme inside Afghanistan or the Afghan army to be a strong power protecting Afghan borders and sovereignty, like the Soviet Union had built for us, a strong army. We want build a strong army like that,” Karzai said.

President of Afghanistan Mohammad Ashraf Ghani will soon visit Russia, the country’s former leader Hamid Karzai said.

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"The Russian government continues to work with my successor, President Ghani, he will visit Russia soon. This will be a meeting in the framework of the SCO summit," Karzai said at a press conference at the Rossiya Segodnya press center in Moscow.

He added that Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Ghani will find time to talk and to deepen the countries' relations. "We strive for this," Karzai said.

Russia’s expanded role in the fight against terrorism as Afghanistan’s neighbor with shared national security interests is inevitable, the former Afghan leader stressed.

He pointed out that he suggested tackling the issue of terrorism on a bilateral basis.

Russia’s former Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov confirmed at the conference that Karzai met Putin on Wednesday and spoke with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov earlier on Thursday.

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