WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? A U.S.-Afghan strategic partnership agreement is being held up by Afghan demands for limits on "night raids" against insurgents and for a timeline for Afghans to assume control over detention centers, sources following the talks told Reuters.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said last week that the two nations had agreed on as much as 90 percent of the substance of the keystone deal. It is intended to provide a framework for the future U.S. role in Afghanistan as control over security is gradually transferred to the Afghans.
While U.S. officials had hoped to unveil the document for an international conference in Germany on December 5, disputes over controversial night raids on Afghan homes and the running of detention centers could delay it well beyond that date, congressional staff who follow the issue say.
"I think a more realistic expectation is now at NATO in Chicago," one congressional aide said, asking not to be named, referring to a NATO summit planned for May 2012.
The sticking points are more evidence of strains in the U.S.-Afghan relationship as Western combat forces start leaving. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly criticized Western military tactics and said recently that Afghanistan would back neighboring Pakistan if it went to war with the United States.
Under an international agreement reached last year, local Afghan forces are to be in charge of security by the end of 2014, as Western forces withdraw. Thirty-three thousand of nearly 100,000 U.S. troops will leave by next September.
But the West will likely fund Afghanistan's police and army for years to come. Clinton made clear the United States would continue playing a role in security.
"We anticipate having a transition that does include security components, not only from the United States, but also from NATO," she told lawmakers last week.
U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and General John Allen, who commands U.S. and NATO forces there, are working through some of the security cooperation issues with Karzai, Clinton said.
A U.S. military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the partnership document would agree to an extended U.S. troop presence in principle, and it might define broadly what types of things troops would do beyond 2014.
But the details such as troop numbers would be worked out in a subsequent "Status of Forces" agreement, he said.
HATED MILITARY TACTIC
Night raids, in which soldiers search Afghan homes for militants under the cover of darkness, have long been one of the most hated foreign military tactics in Afghanistan. Karzai has repeatedly denounced them and pushed for them to be halted altogether.
Many western military commanders see them as an important tool against the Taliban and other insurgents, however.
But some of the raids are led by Afghan forces. Afghan commanders must sign off on all raids, Afghan forces are often present for them and lead at least 25 percent of the raids, according to a recent report by the Open Society Foundations, which is backed by philanthropist George Soros, and The Liaison Office, a Kabul-based nongovernmental organization.
U.S. officials want to make transfer of authority over detention centers in Afghanistan "conditions-based," the congressional staffer said. In particular, they want to make sure detainees now held by foreign forces will be properly treated when they are transferred to Afghan control.
NATO has already stopped sending prisoners to some Afghan jails because of U.N. warnings of torture there.
A U.N. report last month said that Afghanistan's intelligence agency and police force have been "systematically" torturing detainees, including children, at a number of jails. The Afghan government rejected many of the allegations but conceded there may have been abuse.
The Washington Post reported last week that CIA, U.S. military and State Department officials were warned of abuses at one Kabul prison run by the Afghan intelligence service, but continued to transfer prisoners to the service's custody.
The United States is also concerned about the security of Afghan prisons. In April, hundreds of prisoners escaped from a jail in Kandahar in Afghanistan's southern Taliban heartland.
"The detainee issue is pretty difficult to resolve. I don't think we or the Afghans feel a lot of pressure to conclude this (agreement) quickly," said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official who chaired Obama's 2009 review of Afghan war policy.
A State Department official would not comment on the talks' substance, but said there was no hard deadline for the deal.
"We look forward to coming to agreement soon, but we are committed to the right agreement, not fast agreement."
(Additional reporting by Missy Ryan; Writing by Susan Cornwell; Editing by Warren Strobel and Eric Walsh)
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