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Karzai: let Aghans run Afghanistan
International forces should let Afghans run Afghanistan, helping them but not going over their heads to impose foreign solutions, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said yesterday.
Karzai is supported by NATO and its allies, but their relationship has been soured by allegations of Afghan corruption and an Afghan perception that foreign forces are not giving primacy to the country's own authorities.
Improving the situation "means enabling Afghanistan to deliver services to the people and removing any parallel activity to that of the Afghan government," Karzai told the annual Munich Security Conference.
NATO-led reconstruction teams, non-governmental organizations, international aid groups and bodies such as the UN "must be a support to the Afghan government, not a rival to it," Karzai said, repeating the phrase four times to hammer the point home.