The Taliban broke off confidence-building talks with the Americans on Thursday and the Afghan President ordered US troops out of villages, demanding a transition of security from Nato control in 2013.
The announcements from the Islamist militia fighting American troops for 10 years and President Hamid Karzai, Washington’s key ally in Kabul, came just days after an unprecedented shooting spree by an American soldier killed 16 civilians. The fallout overshadowed a two-day visit to Afghanistan by US secretary of defence Leon Panetta that had been aimed at soothing anger over Sunday’s massacre and February’s burning of Qurans at a US base in the war-torn country.
The Taliban made no mention of the killings as it announced the suspension of contacts. “It was due to their alternating and ever-changing position that the Islamic Emirate was compelled to suspend all dialogue with the Americans,” the Taliban said on their website. In Kabul, Mr Panetta and Mr Karzai gave radically different versions of talks between the two men, after the Americans insisted that recent events would not see US-led Nato combat troops withdraw earlier than scheduled in 2014.