For the past several months Afghan president Hamid Karzai has been lashing out at NATO forces, complaining bitterly that civilian casualities were the result of Western indifference to Afghan lives and arguing (probably correctly, though unhelpfully) that such "collateral damage" was abetting the terrorists. But in his Kabul press conference yesterday, Karzai sang a different tune when asked about one of the biggest air strike foul-ups of the war:
Striking a magnanimous tone, Karzai said he would welcome Abdullah or any of his other challengers into a new government. He also reached out to his foreign allies, saying that a recent NATO airstrike in northern Afghanistan that killed at least 70 people, including civilians, was "wrong" but that Germany, whose forces ordered the bombing, was a "great friend" of Afghanistan and had "no intention of hurting anybody."
In completely unrelated news, Karzai is trying to convince NATO countries that he did not steal the Afghan election and that they should validate his presidency as legitimate.