Americas

Americas

US ambassador to Kabul to step down early

22 May 2012 21:32 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. he US ambassador to Afghanistan, Ryan Crocker, is to leave his post early for health reasons, US officials said Tuesday, a day after NATO leaders charted a path out of the Afghan war at a summit in Chicago, APA reports quoting news.yahoo.com website.

The veteran diplomat, who was appointed to Kabul 10 months ago for a two-year term, previously served as the US envoy to Iraq, Pakistan and Syria.

"Amb Crocker has confirmed with regret that he will be leaving Kabul this summer," the embassy said on its Twitter feed.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Crocker told his Afghan hosts and NATO-led forces that "he intends to depart his post for health reasons in mid-summer, following the Kabul and Tokyo Conferences," in June and July respectively.

She did not elaborate on what the health reasons were.

CBS news, which earlier reported on Crockerâ€™s plans, quoted a senior State Department official as saying only that Kabul is "a tough place to serve".

Now aged 62, Crocker was appointed out of retirement in July 2011.

His early departure coincides with that of US ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron Munter, and reports that US General John Allen is about to become the fourth NATO commander in Afghanistan to leave early, tipped for a job in Europe.

The United States has nearly 100,000 troops in Afghanistan -- out of a NATO total of 130,000 -- fighting an insurgency by hardline Taliban Islamists against the government of President Hamid Karzai.

During his term, Crocker oversaw thorny negotiations leading to the signing of a Strategic Partnership Agreement with Afghanistan, designed to govern relations between the two countries after NATO troops pull out in 2014.

Nuland said "Crockerâ€™s tenure has been marked by enormous achievements," including the strategic partnership deal and the Bonn Conference on the transition from NATO to Afghan security control from 2014.

She also listed two memoranda of understanding on detentions and special operations, and the Chicago NATO Summit that backed plans to hand Afghans the combat lead from mid-2013 while vowing to stand by them in the long run.

"These achievements are the guarantee that as Afghanistan moves to a brighter future secured by its own capabilities, it does so... in sovereign and equal partnership with the United States in particular and the international community generally," Nuland quoted Crocker as saying.

But ties have been rocked by a series of incidents in recent months, including a video showing US troops urinating on Taliban corpses, riots provoked by the burning of the Koran at a US military base and a massacre of 17 civilians blamed on an American soldier.

Details of the number of US troops who may remain in the country after 2014, and their status, are yet to be worked out in a separate security pact.

Crocker, along with Allen, was summoned to Karzaiâ€™s palace earlier this month after a number of civilians were killed in ISAF air strikes.

Karzai said then that the civilian deaths threatened the strategic pact.

But both Crocker and Karzai were in Chicago for the NATO summit, where US President Barack Obama and his allies ratified an "irreversible" roadmap to "gradually and responsibly" withdraw their combat troops by the end of 2014.

Crocker previously served as ambassador to Iraq from 2007-2009, during a period in which violence dropped dramatically and the two countries signed a military pact providing for the eventual withdrawal of all US forces.

In recognition of his efforts, Crocker received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the countryâ€™s highest civilian honour, in 2009.

He was ambassador to Pakistan from 2004-2007 and to Syria from 1998-2001.