Hamid Karzai Reacts to Taliban Talks; Imagine a World.
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST (voice-over): Tonight: a rare interview with the still influential former Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, as talks between the Taliban and government officials take place. Is there any chance for peace? Also ahead: a new film about the late diplomat and U.S. point man on Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, reveals what really was going on behind the scenes. The director, his son, David, joins me later.</s>AMANPOUR: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the program. I'm Christiane Amanpour. Neither side wants to call them peace talks, but Afghan political figures and Taliban militants have met in Qatar for talks aimed at ending their long war of attrition. Just today, a suicide bomber, though, hit a bus carrying government employees in Kabul, killing at least one and wounding a dozen more. And a recent push by the Taliban in the north highlights more of a desire to fight than to talk. That hasn't deterred the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, who's recently been trying to win global and regional support for his peace initiative. But former president Hamid Karzai is concerned about Ghani's so-called tilt towards Pakistan and his gamble on reaching a peace deal with the Taliban. Now back in 2001, the U.S. had routed Al Qaeda and the Taliban and Hamid Karzai and his men were billeted in the palace that Mullah Omar had deserted. It was just before he became Afghan leader and here's a snapshot of his early optimism back then.</s>HAMID KARZAI, FORMER PRESIDENT OF AFGHANISTAN: It's an exciting time. It's a new beginning for Afghanistan. After many years of disasters and bloodshed and suffering for our people, we have a new opportunity, a new opportunity that the Afghan people must grasp, must take, a new opportunity that the world must use to help us.</s>AMANPOUR: Thirteen years and two presidential terms later, Hamid Karzai joins me now from Kabul. Welcome to the program. Welcome back to the program, Mr. Karzai.</s>KARZAI: Welcome. I'm happy to be with you, Christiane. Good to talk to you.</s>AMANPOUR: President Ghani has made negotiating with the Taliban a priority and also getting closer to Pakistan in the hope that that might help a peace deal. Do you agree with that? Is that a policy that you support?</s>KARZAI: I very much agree with -- and actually this has been one of my primary goals as well, in the past 13 years, to talk to the Taliban, to the ones who are Afghans and to bring them to peace talks and to bring them to our country and band this country together. With regard to relations with Pakistan, improvement of relations with Pakistan, this is also something that the Afghans want but an equal relation between two sovereign countries. This is what we all seek and between two sovereign countries, a relationship will only be established when radicalism is no longer used as a tool by our neighbor, Pakistan. We hope that will happen soon.</s>AMANPOUR: Mr. Karzai, let me ask you another issue and see whether you agree. President Ghani is, I think, trying to get the Obama administration to keep its forces in Afghanistan for a little bit longer and this year has been very deadly; last year was the deadliest on record and everybody predicts more and more attacks and more and more deaths inside Afghanistan. Do you support the idea of U.S. forces staying a bit longer?</s>KARZAI: Well, the United States and NATO's arrival in Afghanistan in 2001 after the tragic attacks on New York and Washington was welcomed by the Afghan people because we both, Afghanistan and our partners in the international community, wanted to free Afghanistan from terrorism and issue crit (ph) foreign invasion. That initial stage was extremely successful. We were liberated. We are grateful for that. Subsequent to that when it came to the fight against terrorism and extremism, we did not get the results we want and the Afghans suffered a lot. That's where we had a difference of opinion. Now on the U.S. staying further in Afghanistan, we have no problem with that provided the United States presence in Afghanistan will strengthen the unity of the Afghan people, will not work against the unity of the Afghan people and that it will not try directly or indirectly to subdue us to a foreign country, to another country.</s>AMANPOUR: Now how is there going to be a rapprochement with the Taliban or some kind of peace deal if they haven't even been able to work out a cease- fire at these talks, which were not official peace talks, but in Qatar they have not even been able to come up with a cease-fire and the Taliban continues to say we're not going to play ball until every last foreign force, every last American is out of the country?</s>KARZAI: My advice to the Taliban is that they must give up on this demand, which is more an excuse for creating misery for the Afghan people, for causing civilian casualties to Afghanistan, for preventing Afghanistan from making progress. My request rather the Taliban is that they must come to Afghanistan and that the moment we have peace here, we have stability here, then we can then work together towards an Afghanistan that does not need any more foreign help in whatever way that may be.</s>AMANPOUR: It was generally acknowledged that by the end of your term in office, relations between you and the Obama administration were poisonous. That's what people used to say. They were poisonous. There had been so many months and perhaps years of very, very tense relations. Do you support President Ghani's wholehearted effort to improve relations with the United States?</s>KARZAI: I had no ideological difference with the United States. I have immense respect for the American people and for the help that the American people have given to Afghanistan. My job as the president of Afghanistan was to protect the life of the Afghan people and to defend the sovereignty of Afghanistan. I simply wanted to protect the life of the Afghan people and the sovereignty of the Afghan people where the American people, the U.S. government have helped Afghanistan in education, in health, in the building of roads and the improvement of the economy we are grateful. Where we have suffered because of military operations we are not happy about that and I wanted that to end. The civilian casualties, the presence in Afghanistan where Afghans were killed and similar actions that caused us hurt. So, no, no ideological difference. I very much want relations with America. I wanted it then; I want it today. But I want a relationship in which America will benefit and Afghanistan will benefit as well, in peace, stability and dignity.</s>AMANPOUR: Well, briefly, there are still considerable numbers of airstrikes in Afghanistan by U.S. forces. Do you support President Ghani's efforts at rapprochement? And you know, just to get that relationship back on a solid footing under the current circumstances?</s>KARZAI: I don't support any airstrikes in Afghanistan. I did not support it then. I don't support it now.</s>AMANPOUR: All right. Let me move forward on another issue that was also very, very tense and we're going to be discussing the legacy of Richard Holbrooke later after a break. So I want to ask you there were some very tense times between you both, even Robert Gates, who was Defense Secretary and CIA director, said in his book that Richard Holbrooke tried to undermine you and wanted anybody but you to be president. There were incandescent rows between him and you. He shouted at you and accused you of rigging the Afghan election in 2009. Did you make amends with Richard Holbrooke? How bad was that for the ability to make peace?</s>KARZAI: Well, Richard Holbrooke is no longer with us. He has passed away. And about someone that's no longer with us, it's not proper for me to talk. But on the elections, yes. We all know the story. Robert Gates, the then- Defense Secretary, has written about it. That's a part of history that was not a happy one, not a good one. But that is the past. Now Afghanistan and America should begin a new beginning and one in which Afghanistan will benefit and so will the United States. So in other words, I want America to be friends with Afghanistan and stay with Afghans but where the Afghan interest is also very much kept in mind and promoted.</s>AMANPOUR: The film that his son has made says that you informed the administration after a little bit after this row, that you were ready to let bygones be bygones. But the film says the administration did not fully back Richard Holbrooke's diplomacy. Were you aware that the U.S. point man, the diplomat for Afghanistan and Pakistan, was not fully backed by his own administration?</s>KARZAI: That was not my impression, no. I -- my impression was that the administration and Mr. Holbrooke were walking the same trail, talking the same practice.</s>AMANPOUR: One final question: what are your greatest regrets and your greatest triumphs after your two presidential terms? What sticks out in your mind?</s>KARZAI: Well, Afghanistan became a respected member of the international community. Afghanistan's flag is flying all over the world. Afghanistan reemerged as a sovereign nation. Afghanistan became the home of all Afghans. Thousands and thousands and hundreds of thousands Afghan youths got educated. Millions of our children went to school. A free press, a democratic order, a better economy, better roads, those are the triumphs of my year in -- as the president. The saddest part of my presidency is casualties to the Afghan people, people getting bombed in their homes and people being sent to prisons in their own country and some other aspects of the past 13 years. So on the whole, it's a happy and sad book.</s>AMANPOUR: Well, on that note, Mr. Hamid Karzai, thank you very much indeed for joining me today.</s>KARZAI: Good to talk to you. Very happy to talk to you.</s>AMANPOUR: Thank you so much. And after a break, we will speak to Richard Holbrooke's son, David, about the film that he's made, delving into his father's life and the secret tapes the diplomat was dictating while Afghan diplomacy was going on, exposing the private truth behind the politics. But first, back when he first burst onto the world stage, top designer Tom Ford called Hamid Karzai "the chicest man on the planet." Also he was something of an anglophile. Karzai is now donating one of his traditional chapan coats to the British museum.