Defence Secretary Leon Panetta Defence Secretary Leon Panetta warned Pakistan Thursday, that the US is losing patience over its refusal to eliminate safe havens for insurgents who attack US troops in neighbouring Afghanistan. Panetta lashed out at Pakistan and the al-Qaeda-linked Haqqani network during a brief visit to Kabul overshadowed by fury over a NATO air strike that allegedly killed 18 civilians, an issue that the Pentagon chief did not address in public.
Panetta left Kabul less than five hours after his arrival, as Afghan President Hamid Karzai pledged to cut short a trip to Beijing and head home over the deaths of around 40 civilians Wednesday in the air strike and a suicide bombing.
Panetta\'s visit to Kabul to assess the state of the war and plans to withdraw US combat troops by the end of 2014 coincided with an increase in violence.
\"Even though we are seeing an uptick in violence in recent days, the overall level of violence is down from past years,\" he said.
The Haqqani group, a faction linked to the Taliban and al-Qaeda that is believed to be based in Pakistan\'s lawless tribal district of North Waziristan, is blamed for some of the deadliest attacks in Afghanistan\'s 10 year war.
\"It\'s an increasing concern that this safe haven exists and that there are those like the Haqqanis who are making use of that to attack our forces,\" Panetta told a news conference with his Afghan counterpart, Abdul Rahim Wardak.
\"We are reaching the limits of our patience here. For that reason, it’s extremely important that Pakistan take action to prevent this kind of safe haven from taking place and from allowing terrorists to use their country as a safety net in order to conduct their attacks on our forces”.
\"We have made that very clear time and time again and we will continue to do that. But as I said, we are reaching the limits of our patience,\" he added.
The Afghan and US governments have said they do not believe the war in Afghanistan can be won without safe havens in Pakistan being dismantled. Pakistanis have accused them of deflecting blame for the increasingly deadly war.
The US leads 130,000 NATO troops fighting the Taliban insurgency and is planning to withdraw the bulk of combat forces from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, and hand responsibility for security to the Afghans.
But civilian casualties caused by US and NATO air strikes have been a frequent source of tension between Karzai and the US.
The Afghan president, who was attending a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in Beijing, issued a stinging rebuke of NATO\'s latest air strike.
\"Attacks by NATO that cause life and property losses to civilians under no circumstances could be justified and are not acceptable,\" Karzai said of the incident on Wednesday in Logar province, south of Kabul.
Karzai:\"is deeply grieved\" over the deaths in Logar and those from a Kandahar suicide bombing on the same day, and \"will shorten his trip to China and will very soon return to the country\", his office said.
NATO\'s US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said\"multiple insurgents\" were killed in the air strike, which was ordered after troops came under fire during an operation against a Taliban commander.
But ISAF said it would launch an investigation after local police said 18 civilians, including women and children, were killed in the strike.
For the past five years the number of civilians killed in the war has risen steadily, reaching a record of 3,021 in 2011, with the vast majority caused by insurgents, the UN says.
In Kandahar Wednesday, 23 civilians were killed when two Taliban bombers blew themselves up at a makeshift bazaar and truck stop near a major NATO base.
Panetta told US troops in a speech at the heavily fortified Kabul airport that the decade-long war was at \"a turning point\".
He sought to reassure soldiers that their sacrifices had not been in vain and Afghans that NATO\'s drawdown did not mean they would be abandoned.
US commanders have \"put a very good plan in place\", and Afghans worried about the withdrawal should know \"that we\'re not going any place\", he said in a reference to plans to keep a residual force in Afghanistan.
The post-2014 role, the size of which is yet to be determined, would include fighting \"terrorism\" and training and advising, he said
\"We\'ve lost a lot people in battle. We\'ve got to make damn sure they didn\'t die in vain\".