Hillary Clinton: US not cutting and running from Afghanistan

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Saturday said the Obama Administration is not “cutting and running” from Afghanistan.

“Absolutely not, I want to really stress that,” Clinton told CNN in an interview when asked if the US was “cutting and running” from Afghanistan.

“Because our analysis of what happened in Afghanistan and Pakistan very clearly demonstrates that not only the US, but the international community sort of just said, ‘Okay, job is done, Soviet Union is gone’, and we walked away, leaving a very difficult and increasingly dangerous presence in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, a drug trade that flourished during that time period. There were many problems that we had to take some responsibility for, but we did not,” she said.

Clinton said that she wants to make clear to people of both Afghanistan and Pakistan that the US was looking for a long-term partnership.

Noting that Afghan President Hamid Karzai was within his rights to hold peace talks with Taliban leader Mullah Omar, Clinton said she would be skeptical of such talks.

“I think it’s the right of the president of a sovereign nation to talk with whomever he chooses to talk with. But we would be quite skeptical of the results of any such talks,” Clinton said.