US Vice President Joe Biden stressed Tuesday that his country's troops could stay in Afghanistan after 2014 if Afghans want them to, on day two of a surprise visit to the war-torn nation. Speaking after talks with President Hamid Karzai in Kabul, Biden said: "We're not leaving if you (Afghans) don't want us to leave".
But he also emphasised that the planned handover of responsibility for security from international troops to Afghan forces in four years, agreed at a Nato summit in November, was on track. "It's not our intention to govern or to nation-build - as President Karzai often points out, this is the responsibility of the Afghan people," Biden told reporters at a press conference.
"We stand ready to help you in that effort and we'll continue to stand ready to help you in that effort after 2014." There are about 97,000 United States troops serving in Afghanistan as part of an international force of some 140,000. Limited, conditions-based withdrawals are due to start in July ahead of the scheduled 2014 transition.
In 2010, coalition troops suffered their bloodiest year yet in Afghanistan with 711 deaths, according to the icasualties.org website, while opinion polls suggest increasing numbers of Americans want their troops to come home. Biden said Afghanistan was now in a "new phase" and insisted that Taliban momentum had been "largely arrested" in key areas such as the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar.
His comments came despite several recent attacks in the south, seen as the focus of the war, including a suicide bombing at a bath house in Kandahar province last week which killed 17 people. "We have a strategy and the resources in place to accomplish the goal of a stable and a growing and an independent Afghanistan able to provide for its own security," Biden said.