Karzai demands 'justice' over abuse charge
U.N. condemns reported deaths of Afghan detainees
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The president of Afghanistan has demanded justice from the United States over the alleged abuse of two Afghan detainees who reportedly died in American custody.
But Hamid Karzai said on CNN's "Late Edition" that the reported incidents "must not reflect on the United States."
Karzai, who arrived Sunday in Washington, met Monday with U.S. President George W. Bush at the White House.
His comments came on the same day that the United Nations condemned the alleged abuse as "utterly unacceptable." It also called on the U.S. military to allow a probe by Afghan investigators. (Full story)
The abuse was reported Friday by The New York Times in a story that cited a 2,000-page confidential file on the Army's criminal investigation into the deaths of the Afghan men at Bagram Air Base north of Kabul in December 2002.
"This is simply not acceptable," Karzai said. "We are angry about this. We want justice. We want the people responsible for this sort of brutal behavior punished and tried and made public.
"At the same time, I must say that while we condemn this, we show Afghans, we show the rest of the world that the behavior of two soldiers or interrogators must not reflect on the United States or on the U.S. people," he said.
"There are bad people everywhere."
Karzai, a former U.S. oil company executive seen by many in his own country as a U.S. puppet, came to the United States 10 days after at least 15 people were killed in anti-U.S. protests in his country. (Full story)
The protests were sparked in part by a Newsweek report quoting a U.S. official as saying that a U.S. investigation had found that interrogators at the detainee facility in the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, naval base had defiled the Quran.
Newsweek retracted the story when its source later said he wasn't sure his information was correct. (Full story)
The Afghan president said the allegations of defilement of the Quran were "a serious matter about people's beliefs and feelings."
But he said the protests were "directed at the peace process" and the "elections in Afghanistan."
A journalist based in Afghanistan, Nick Meo, told CNN that Karzai was "under a lot of pressure" within Afghanistan to get results.
"He needs a result on this issue of prisoners. And he'd also like to get more money out of the international community," Meo said.
Meo said that many Afghans were unhappy at the pace of reconstruction, saying they were not seeing much difference in their lives.
In the interview Karzai also angrily defended his presidency against a charge published in Sunday's Times that a poppy eradication program in Afghanistan is failing because "has been unwilling to assert strong leadership."
The charge came from a memo sent from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the Times said, and was leaked to the paper by "an American official alarmed at the slow pace of poppy eradication."
"We have done our job," Karzai said.
"The Afghan people have done their job. Now the international community must come and provide alternative revenue to the Afghan people which they have not done so far," Karzai said.
"Let us stop this blame game. Instead of blaming Afghanistan, the international community must come and fulfill its own objective to the Afghan people."
Journalist Meo said that the poppy issue is Karzai's most pressing problem right now, totally dominating the Afghan economy. (Karzai rejects U.S. poppy criticism)
In other comments, Karzai said fugitive terror leader Osama bin Laden is not in Afghanistan.
"If he were, we would catch him," he said.
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Associated Press contributed to this report.
