Juan Manuel Santos Calderon in New York on September 24, 2013
Bogota, Colombia (CNN) -- Colombian President Juan
Manuel Santos officially announced he will seek re-election, a decision
that could affect the ongoing peace talks between the government and the
FARC.
"You elected me to
strengthen the results that we had achieved in security, and we have
delivered," Santos said in a televised speech Wednesday night.
Santos, who was first
elected in 2010 on a platform of continuing an offensive against the
leftist guerrillas that have been at war with the government for
decades, instead followed a different path.
The hallmark of his
presidency now is the peace process between the government and the
largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or
FARC.
The peace process has
been ongoing for one year, with progress coming slowly. This approach is
controversial in Colombia, which in the past has been burned by failed
negotiation attempts.
With a peace agreement
unlikely to be in place before next year's presidential election, its
chances of success could be foreshadowed by the vote.
One of Santos' rivals for
the presidency is Oscar Ivan Zuluaga, who has called for an end to the
peace talks and is against giving a political space to the rebels.
Zuluaga's proposal is
backed by former President Alvaro Uribe, a former ally of Santos who now
favors someone with a hardline stance against the guerrillas.
Santos says he wants to be re-elected to finish the peace process he started.
"We still have big challenges, but I'm convinced that the way to confront them is not only through blood and fire," he said.
Santos' current approval rating of about 30% means his incumbency will not guarantee him a second four-year term.
"He thinks that because
of fragmentation among the political parties and that other political
leaders also haven't consolidated supporters, he can be re-elected,"
political analyst Jaime Arango said.
Santos placed all his
political capital on the negotiations with the FARC, so it's natural
that he is seeking re-election, another analyst, Vicente Torrijos, said.
Seeking a second term was his only option given that the peace process is still underway, he said.
"So he is going to
present himself to Colombians and the world as the peacemaker and of
course this is his best calling card to aspire to this re-election," he
said.
London (CNN) -- After centuries buried beneath the Vatican,
and decades hidden away inside the Holy See, the bones of a man long
believed to be St. Peter, one of the founding fathers of the Christian
church, are to go on display for the first time.
The controversial remains
will be revealed to the public on Sunday at a mass in St Peter's Square
marking the conclusion of the Catholic church's "Year of Faith."
Writing in L'Osservatore Romano,
the semi-official Vatican newspaper, Archbishop Rino Fisichella said
the "relics which tradition recognizes as those of the apostle who gave
his life for the Lord" would be exhibited as part of the service.
L'Osservatore Romano reports that 8.5 million pilgrims have venerated the relics over the course of the year.
But whether the bones,
normally kept in an urn housed in the private chapel of the Pope's own
Vatican apartments, really are those of St. Peter, the
fisherman-turned-disciple who became the first pope, is open to
question.
Tradition has it that St.
Peter was martyred -- by being crucified, upside down -- in Rome in
A.D. 64. before being buried in the city.
In his book "The Vatican Diaries," John Thavis
wrote that "St. Peter's tomb in the cemetery on the Vatican Hill
became... a popular pilgrimage site," prompting the emperor Constantine
to build a basilica in his honor in the 4th century.
The remains which will be
revealed on Sunday were among those discovered during an archaeological
dig begun on the site in 1939; in 1968 the then pope, Paul VI, declared
that they had been identified "in a manner which we believe
convincing."
But with no DNA evidence
to conclusively prove their identity, whether they belong to St. Peter
is likely to remain an enduring mystery.
CNN's Vatican analyst John Allen says that like so much concerning religion, the belief that the bones are those of the disciple comes down to faith.
"Like other famous
relics, such as the Shroud of Turin or the Belt of Mary, they evoke awe
and devotion regardless of their actual provenance," Allen writes in an Op-Ed for CNN. "Faith, as the Bible puts it, lies in 'the evidence of things not seen.'"
Obama administration takes action for the first time against wind farms for killing eagles
A golden eagle flies near a turbine on a wind farm owned by PacifiCorp in May 2013.Matt Young/AP
For the first time, the Obama administration is taking action against wind farms for killing eagles.
Studies shows more than a dozen birds die each year through
collisions with turbines, and that wind energy facilities can also cause
harm through the loss of natural habitat.
In a settlement announced Friday, Duke Energy will pay $1 million for
killing 14 golden eagles over the past three years at two wind farms in
Wyoming.
The company says it pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
The case is the first to be prosecuted under that law for a wind
company by the Obama administration, which has championed
pollution-free wind power.
Eagles can slam into massive turbines while they are focused on the ground below them searching for prey.
A study by government biologists this year found that wind energy
facilities in 10 states had killed at least 67 golden and bald eagles
since 2008.
By 2030, there could be more than 100,000 wind turbines in the United States, and these could kill more than one million birds per year, according to the American Bird Conservatory.
If wind energy is to be completely green, it must be "bird-smart,"
the Conservatory said. That means careful siting, operation, monitoring,
and compensation to reduce and redress any harm to birds.
Eagles tend to avoid areas where the landscape has been altered or
developed, such as farms or towns, making these spots safer for
developing wind energy.
Areas that should not host wind farms are migratory bottlenecks,
wetlands, key nesting areas, the edges of ridges migrant birds use for
direction, and habitat or flight paths of endangered or declining
species, the Conservatory recommended.
Lights, such as strobe lights, can minimize nighttime migratory bird deaths. Al Jazeera and The Associated Press
As
a college student in Baton Rouge, La., Clarence Aaron played football,
worked summers as a longshoreman and volunteered in his community. Like
many college students, he eventually did something very foolish. For
Aaron, it involved drugs: He introduced a friend to a cocaine dealer and
played a minor role in two drug deals, one of which did not even go
through.
For that mistake, he will spend the rest of his life behind bars.
Detainees at the Adelanto Detention Facility on Nov.
15, 2013, in Adelanto, Calif. It is the largest and newest ICE detention
center in the state and is managed by the Geo Group, a private company.
John Moore/Getty Images
He is not alone. Nathan Pettus stole three belts from a department
store. Damon Caliste stole digital cameras from Wal-Mart. Alexander
Surry was in possession of a single crack rock. Leopoldo
Hernandez-Miranda was convicted nearly 20 years ago of marijuana
possession with intent to distribute; he is now 74 years old. Timothy
Tyler mailed small amounts of LSD to an undercover agent he thought was a
fellow Grateful Dead fan.
All of them are serving sentences of life without parole, or LWOP.
They and other nonviolent LWOP prisoners are costing U.S. taxpayers over
$1.7 billion dollars more than if LWOP were not a sentencing option,
according to a report (PDF) released
this month by the American Civil Liberties Union. And much of that
money is going to a slew of private companies that profit from mass
incarceration.
LWOP is second only to the death penalty in harsh prison sentences.
In much of the world and through most of U.S. history, it was meted out
for only the most serious of violent offenders. Only 20 percent of
countries even have LWOP sentencing, and those that do typically reserve
it for murder. But LWOP sentences have skyrocketed — quadrupling in the
past 20 years — with the majority of them handed out for nonviolent
crimes. The rising rates have mirrored a general increase in
incarceration over the past few decades, but they have been particularly
influenced by tough-on-crime legislation like mandatory minimum
sentencing laws, which give a judge almost no leeway in sentencing after
a conviction, and three-strikes laws, which mandate life imprisonment
after three felonies, even if none of them were violent. Of prisoners
serving life sentences without parole, 79 percent committed nonviolent
drug crimes. In the United States, 1 prisoner in 30 is serving a life
sentence without the possibility of parole. In Pennsylvania the ratio is
1 in 10. In Louisiana it is 1 in 9.
With taxpayers shelling out billions of dollars for nonviolent
offenders to languish in prison until they die and with many more
offenders serving incredibly long sentences, the country’s prison system
has become a cash cow, and private industry has stepped in to grab a
share of it.
Just good business
The U.S. imprisons more people than any other society in the history
of the world, with more than 2 million people currently behind bars, and
private companies are gunning for more (PDF).
The Corrections Corp. of America (CCA), just one of several private
prison companies, netted $1.7 billion dollars in 2010. CCA's president
and CEO, Damon Hininger, made $3.2 million in 2010. The Geo Group,
another top prison company, raked in $1.2 billion and paid its CEO,
George Zoley, $3.4 million the same year. The federal government and
state governments across the nation funnel money into these private
prisons, making them a multibillion dollar industry.
Like many other businesses, the private prison industry lobbies
aggressively for its interests — not a problem in theory until you
remember that its primary interest is building and filling prison beds.
CCA spent more than $18 million on federal lobbying from 1999 to 2009
and nearly $1 million in 2010. From 2000 to 2010, the three biggest
for-profit prison companies made more than $6 million in political
contributions.
We
have entirely lost perspective on what it means to deprive someone of
their personal liberty for such exorbitant amounts of time.
There has been increased focus on private prisons over the past few
years, particularly after a scandal in Arizona, where private prison
companies stood to profit immensely
from a law mandating incarceration of enormous swaths of the state's
immigrant population. But it is not just private prisons that are
cashing in. There is a long list of industries, individuals and institutions
profiting from mass incarceration, all of which have financial
incentives to imprison more people and to make sentences longer. These
include private industry players such as phone companies that charge
astronomical rates for prisoners to call their families, for-profit
prison health care providers, commercial bail bond agents and private prison supervisors. But many other profiteers are public or government entities like public safety authorities profiting from civil forfeitures and prison guard unions.
Privatization of the American incarceration machine, with its
promises to save money and promote efficiency, can sound appealing to
champions of the free market. But it has not actually been shown to save
money or increase efficiency. Instead it creates perverse, ugly
incentives. The people running prisons like businesses operate as most
business owners do: They want to make more money, get bigger and
demonstrate profitability. That is not much of a problem if you are
selling basic goods. It is a big one when the only way to profit is by
locking more people in prison for longer terms.
A grim new normal
The ACLU report focuses on nonviolent offenders who have been
formally sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
But those individuals are, as the ACLU's deputy legal director, Vanita
Gupta, told me, "just the tip of the iceberg in terms of excessive
sentencing and incarceration." Many more people are serving long prison
terms — of hundreds of years — that are effectively life sentences
without parole, Gupta said. "We have become inured to excessive
sentencing. It's just become the new normal."
Compared with life in prison, 10 years sounds short. But think about
what you were doing 10 years ago, and then imagine yourself being locked
in a 6-by-8-foot cell since then. Our cultural perception of what is a
long sentence has become so skewed by the ubiquity of life imprisonment
and sentences of 50 years, 100 years and even multiples of 100 years
that we have entirely lost perspective on what it means to deprive
people of their personal liberty for such exorbitant amounts of time.
When the death penalty was suspended in the 1970s, sentencing changed
dramatically as life without parole became the harshest punishment on
the table. After the death penalty was reinstated, however, things did
not go back; they got even more extreme. With mandatory minimum
sentencing laws, judges have almost no power to hand down reasonable
sentences, while prosecutors have enormous discretion in determining how
long an individual goes to prison. The specter of life in prison is now
routinely used in plea bargaining; after all, even 25 or 50 years
behind bars is preferable to life.
The U.S. now doles out longer, harsher sentences than nearly all
economically and developmentally comparable nations, but those sentences
have not actually resulted in lower crime rates than our peers'. Our
LWOP numbers are 173 times that of the United Kingdom and 29 that of the
Netherlands — the only two European countries that even imprison
offenders without parole. Our crime rates are not appreciably lower than
either of those countries', and we imprison significantly more people
per capita.
What have a failed drug war, a dangerous stigmatization of
imprisonment and extreme sentencing norms yielded instead? A bloated
prison population that churns out offenders who are at best less employable
and at worst more dangerous coming out than they were going in.
Communities devastated by mass incarcerations. A flagging economy
struggling to keep up with the multibillion-dollar burden we have built.
Prisons will at some point effectively become geriatric holding wards for aging inmates.”
We have built, too, towns where much of the local industry revolves
around prisons — communities that are now financially dependent on
incarceration.
"Fifteen years ago or so, every politician fervently denied that the
reason they were supporting prison laws was that they had prisons in
their jurisdictions that were providing jobs," said Malcolm C. Young,
the prison re-entry strategies director at Northwestern Law School's
Bluhm Legal Clinic. "Since the recession, that pretense has dropped
away, and you can read newspapers and see public officials quoted
frequently that they want to keep a prison open because it's
economically important, because of the jobs provided in their
communities."
Bigger than prisons
The prison system has increasingly become a first resort in areas
where other institutions used to step in. Incarceration has largely
taken the place of community mental-health facilities. The sheriff of
Cook County, Ill., where Young used to practice, says his jail has "effectively become the largest mental-health hospital in the country."
We use incarceration instead of treatment and rehabilitation for drug
offenders, and we put in the juvenile-detention system young people who
would be better served with comprehensive support. The prison system
also ends up, in one way or another, catching too many individuals who
have been left barely afloat in a postindustrial society, unable to rely
on the prospect of working a labor job and making a reasonable living.
"It's become a very quick go-to system for a lot of other social
problems like substance abuse, mental illness and the void of
policymaking in immigration," Gupta said. "The criminal-justice system
is not going to solve these problems and in many cases makes it worse."
The failure of other institutions to tackle social problems outside
an incarceration context is a failure of political and public will. With
billions of dollars going toward prisons, politicians can handily
portray themselves as being tough on crime. Long-term investments in
public health and community solutions are more difficult to articulate
in a campaign platform and are less reducible into the sound bites we
all ostensibly agree on — putting criminals behind bars, getting justice
for victims, keeping our streets safe. The individuals who end up
behind bars may be largely nonviolent, but they are also socially
unimportant. They are disproportionately mentally ill, poor and
nonwhite. (It will come as no surprise to learn that the application of
LWOP has been radically prejudicial. At the federal level, nonviolent
black offenders are sentenced to LWOP at 20 times the rate of their
white counterparts.)
Unsustainable and unjust
Overlapping and complex influences — financial, psychological,
cultural and institutional — make fixing the current system no easy
task. But things may be changing, albeit slowly. People across the
political spectrum are seeing that our current rates of incarceration
are unsustainable, and prison reform is increasingly becoming a
bipartisan issue.
The most effective solution may be the simplest: Put fewer people in
jail. Tackle social problems head-on instead of simply punishing
offenders. That means drug treatment and rehabilitation programs,
comprehensive community-based mental-health care, social interventions
for troubled youth and a realistic and humane immigration policy.
We also need to restructure sentencing procedures. An end to
mandatory minimums and three-strikes laws would help, but sentencing in
general needs to be reined in. To that end, we should sentence with a
purpose. "We should be evaluating the extent of the damage that the
individual had caused and the potential problems the individual poses to
their community," said Young. "We should join other countries in
recognizing that even short periods of incarceration are severe
punishment."
A focus on rehabilitation and holistic solutions may also lower the
crime rate, save taxpayer dollars and rebuild devastated communities. At
the very least, reform of the current model, driven by data and
research, would ensure that people like Clarence Aaron would not spend
their entire lives in prisons that, because of life without parole
policies, will at some point effectively become geriatric holding wards
for aging inmates. It would curb our financial waste, and it would end
our brutal indifference to the many people whose lives are destroyed by
the current system.
Jill Filipovic is a lawyer and writer. She blogs at Feministe and is a weekly columnist at the Guardian.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera America's editorial policy.
According to report by government IRS watchdog, security steps safeguarding Americans' personal data is insufficient
J.
Russell George, Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration at
the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), during a House Appropriations
Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee hearing on
Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, June 3, 2013. SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has failed to implement new
management protocols to sufficiently protect the security of American
taxpayers' personal data, according to a new report from the
government’s tax watchdog.
The report, conducted in September but publicly released for the first time Thursday, examined previous IRS actions to bolster the agency’s ability to ensure secure taxpayer data.
But the annual internal audit of IRS security protocols conducted by
the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) said that
the actions taken by the agency were insufficient and could leave
personal data open to a possible security breach.
“When the right degree of security diligence is not applied to
systems, disgruntled insiders or malicious outsiders can exploit
security weaknesses and may gain unauthorized access,” said the report.
The IRS instituted a number of "planned corrective actions" (PCAs) in
response to previous TIGTA reports about security shortcomings in the
agency, but the new TIGTA report said that those PCAs, considered
“closed” or completed by the IRS, were inadequate.
“During our audit, TIGTA determined that eight (42 percent) of 19
PCAs that were approved and closed as fully implemented to address
reported security weaknesses from prior TIGTA audits were only partially
implemented.”
Among its recommendations, TIGTA said the IRS should “strengthen its
management controls to adhere to internal control requirements,”
“provide refresher training to employees involved” in the internal
auditing process and indicate where past actions to fix security
shortcomings have been incomplete.
TIGTA said that the IRS “agreed with five of TIGTA’s six
recommendations and plans to issue guidance on internal control
requirements, provide training, and revise the procedures to improve the
IRS’s management controls over the PCAs.” It said that it “partially
agreed with the sixth recommendation to upload documentation for
previously closed PCAs” pending the completion of an internal IRS
assessment.
The new report follows a March 2013 assessment
from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Congressional
watchdog for the government’s use of public funds, which previously
raised concerns about security protections in place by the IRS.
It too placed fault at the ability of the agency to successfully
implement the management reforms of security problems it had already
been alerted to or identified.
“An underlying reason for these [security] weaknesses is that IRS has
not effectively implemented portions of its information security
program,” that report said.
Until IRS appropriately controls users’ access to its systems and
effectively implements its procedures for authorization, the agency has
limited assurance that its information resources are being protected
from unauthorized access, alteration, and disclosure,” it went on to
say.
How do protest activists elected to public office avoid being drawn into politics as usual?
Left:
Chilean presidential candidate Michelle Bachelet delivers a speech at
the party's headquarters in Santiago, on Nov. 17, 2013. Right: Kshama
Sawant ran a grassroots campaign and said she ignored warnings that she
had no chance of winning without corporate money or Democratic
endorsement. Martin Bernetti/AFP/Getty Images (Left), Ted S. Warren/AP (Right)
The left — at least in the somewhat centrist incarnation of Chile’s
former President Michelle Bachelet — emerged dominant from last Sunday's
first-round presidential election. But a sit-in at her campaign office that day by leftist students whose banner
proclaimed that "Change is not in La Moneda (presidential palace), but
in the streets" served up a reminder of the challenges of governing from
the left in a situation where it has built up leverage in recent years
through mass street protests.
Bachelet, a socialist and a survivor of former dictator Augusto
Pinochet's regime of torture in the 1970s and 80s, embraced some of the
concerns of the protest movement, promising to help make higher education available to everyone by
raising corporate taxes and rewriting the constitution. Among those
elected to the legislature as part of Bachelet's New Majority coalition
is Camilla Vallejo, a former student leader who famously led thousands
of Chileans into the streets in 2011 to demand educational reforms.
Vallejo and three other newly elected legislators who all gained
prominence as leaders of the Communist Youth of Chile vowed to use their
platform in the legislature to narrow the gap between rich and poor,
and counter pressure from Bachelet's right flank.
But their entry into mainstream electoral politics has drawn criticism
from their own left flank, among those who fear that being in government
will demobilize their movement on the streets, and thereby dilute its
leverage. Vallejo wasn't buying that argument, telling the Guardian
the election to congress of student leaders "will not only demonstrate
that the social movements can and should have their own representatives
in congress, but also make it possible … to build political spaces that
allow us to make the structural changes our society demands."
Vallejo's dilemma is this: Entering the system she fought so hard to
change might compromise her credibility and also make it harder to keep
people on the streets demanding change. At the same time, choosing not
to participate in institutional politics might jeopardize her ability to
forge change, critics say.
Melissa Sepulveda, the new head of the Universidad de Chile's student
body, told Reuters before the election that she would not vote for
Vallejo. "The possibility for change isn't in Congress," she said.
Chile's leftists also have to contend with the traumatic memory of
Salvador Allende, the democratically elected socialist who was
overthrown and killed in a U.S.-backed coup in 1973, which saw thousands
of leftists tortured and killed.
Vallejo's pledge
to "keep one foot in the streets" is a partial acknowledgement of the
logic in the banner hung by the protesters at Bachelet's office — that
winning elections will not, in itself, ensure far-reaching social
change. And the compromises inevitably involved in operating in elected
political office will leave both Bachelet and Vallejo vulnerable to
outcries from the street.
US activists elected
The dilemma faced by Chilean leftists may be recognizable to some in
U.S. social movements, such as Occupy. Kshama Sawant, a former Occupy
activist, was recently elected as a member of the Seattle City Council,
after running as an avowed socialist. Upon beating Democratic Party incumbent Richard Conlin,
she told Al Jazeera that it is important to enter the political arena
to have a chance at actually changing policies, but, "in a genuine way"
— something she said could be accomplished by "being independent of the
two big-business parties."
Her politics, she said,
would "give political voice to the struggles of low-paid workers,
youth, people of color and all those who are shut out by the political
machine that runs this city on behalf of the wealthy elite." Sawant sees
the choice between life as an activist on the streets and "corporate
politician" as a false dichotomy.
"People are forced to think you can either be an activist for the
outside, or, if you’re in the inside, you cannot do what you want to do.
But it depends on whether you’re clear that you cannot do it by being a
part of the two-party system."
Sawant campaigned on raising the minimum wage to $15 and challenging
social injustice in the corporate sector. She said she does not accept
corporate funding, and paid for her campaign with donations from private
individuals. She not only rejects politics as usual, but sees her role
as disruption of the current order.
"What needs clarity is that Democrats (politicians) are not our
allies either," she said, making the case for politics independent of
the two-party system. Instead, she will seek a coalition of her own,
using her position "to encourage more and more people to become part of
social movements." And despite proclaiming an ideology that has long
been marginalized on the U.S. political landscape, she hopes to
capitalize on the growing number of young Americans who are said to think more favorably of socialism than capitalism, according to a 2011 Pew research poll.
"I can stay true to my principles but I am only one person," she said. "We need momentum."
Sawant, however, may not be quite so alone. In Cambridge, Mass., Nadeem Mazen, a former Occupy Boston activist, was elected to the City Council with a campaign focusing on affordable housing, education and social justice.
He believes the risks associated with trying to stay in office for
decades might outweigh the benefits of long-term institutional politics.
He promised to "cycle fresh voices" into the system, and imposed a
limit on his term to stay "more focused." He used off-beat electoral
techniques, such as employing video skills to bring politics closer to
the public, which cannot always be expected to have time for "heavy
reading to get up to speed on Cambridge politics," he said. He also promised to use at least a third of his city councilor salary to fund community organizing.
"I pledge to put my dollars towards hiring leaders and organizers in
our community to proactively represent residents' interests," he said. Similarly, Sawant promised that if elected, "I will only take the average worker's wage and donate the rest to building social movements."
Having used credibility built through organizing protests to propel
themselves into elected office, Vallejo, Sawant and Mazen — despite
their ideological differences — share a common dilemma: How to maintain
the leverage they built on the streets from inside political
institutions long dominated by monied interests.
Kabul says vote will have to wait until next president is elected in April 2014, but US wants it signed by end of year
A
grand assembly of tribal chieftains, community elders and politicians
began four days of debating the security pact, which will shape the
future U.S. military presence in Afghanistan. Massoud Hossaini/AFP/Getty Images
The future of U.S. troops in Afghanistan
remained uncertain Friday after a spokesman for Afghan President Hamid
Karzai rejected a U.S. call to sign a security pact by the end of this
year, rather than after next year's presidential election.
The security pact would allow U.S. soldiers to remain in the country beyond 2013, and would give the troops immunity from local legal prosecution – a proposal that has divided Afghanistan.
The United States has repeatedly said it will not wait until after
the April 2014 vote to seal the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA), and
has rejected Karzai's suggestion for the signing to take place next year
"properly and with dignity."
Without an accord, the U.S. could pull out most of its troops by the
end of 2014, as it did two years ago when it failed to negotiate a deal
with Iraq.
"We do not recognize any deadline from the U.S. side," said Aimal
Faizi, a spokesman for Karzai, as Afghan tribal elders considered the
pact for a second day. "They have set other deadlines also, so this is
nothing new to us."
Karzai had suggested on Thursday, as the Afghan leaders began a
meeting known as a Loya Jirga, that the signing of the pact should wait
until after the poll. Having served two terms, he is ineligible to run
again.
My trust with America is not good ... I don't trust them and they don't trust me.
Karzai
In Washington, the White House kept up the pressure on Karzai, saying
President Barack Obama wanted the BSA signed by the end of the year.
Obama would decide about a further U.S. presence after Afghan
authorities approved the deal, U.S. officials say.
"It is our final offer," said White House spokesman Jay Carney.
"We can't push it into next year and be expected to plan for a post-2014 military presence," he told reporters.
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the U.S. needs to ensure
there would be protection for its forces if Washington kept the troops
in Afghanistan beyond next year.
"Without that, I, as secretary of defense, could not recommend to the
president of the United States to go forward," he said on a visit to
Halifax.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said this week that the language of the accord had been agreed upon.
Karzai distances himself
Faizi refused all comment on whether Karzai had endorsed the plan. He
said any action by the president depended strictly on the
recommendation of the Loya Jirga.
"It is absolutely up to the Jirga to decide about the BSA,” he said.
“The president very clearly said good security, peace and good elections
are the key to the signing of this document."
Most participants at the gathering's second day appeared to favor
ratifying the pact. But reporters had little access to opponents of the
deal and were kept away by security staff.
"We have to sign this agreement with the United States of America,"
said Aminullah Mawiz Nooristani, an elder from eastern Nuristan
province. "President Karzai has to sign it as soon as we announce our
decision."
Afghanistan has wrangled for more than a year over the pact with the
U.S., which has had troops in the country since the Taliban was ousted
from power late in 2001.
Karzai has had an increasingly fraught relationship with Washington, and is reluctant to be associated with the pact.
"My trust with America is not good," Karzai told the assembly on
Thursday in his opening speech. "I don't trust them and they don't trust
me."
The elders, largely handpicked by Karzai's administration, are
expected to vote in favor of the document and urge the president to
follow their advice, allowing Karzai to distance himself from the
process without jeopardizing the deal.
The 2,500-member assembly is expected to announce its decision on Sunday.
The pact contains painful concessions such as immunity for U.S.
forces from Afghan law, and allowing them to enter Afghan homes if an
American life is under direct threat.
"Whatever the Jirga tells him, whether they tell him to sign it
before election or after the election, he will follow through," said
Hasseeb Humayun, a member of the group.
If the U.S. pulls out its troops, other countries in the NATO
alliance underpinning Karzai's administration are expected to follow
suit, and a thinner international presence could deter donors from
releasing promised funds.
Afghanistan remains largely dependent on foreign aid. Reuters
