Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has postponed a trip to Afghanistan devoted to providing “solutions for settling the problems” in Iran’s eastern neighbor.
The one-day visit, originally scheduled for Monday, would be the President’s first visit to Afghanistan since both he and his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai were re-elected last year.
“President Ahmadinejad won’t be coming to Kabul,” an informed source at the Karzai’s office told on condition of anonymity.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, has, however, arrived in Afghanistan on Monday morning on an unannounced visit.
Iran blames Afghanistan’s insurgency and the rising Taliban-linked extremism on the West’s interference in the war-torn country.
The US-led war in Afghanistan has killed more than 1,440 civilians this year – a figure almost equal to the US-led coalition’s overall death toll in over eight years of hostilities.
Meanwhile, according to figures released by the Washington Post, around 5,372 American servicemen have been killed since 2001 in the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.
