It looks like Hamid Karzai is issuing new demands for a status of forces agreement:

Efforts by the United States and Afghanistan to finalize a long-term security arrangement appeared on the brink of collapse Monday as Afghan President Hamid Karzai made a new set of demands, and the Obama administration said it would be forced to begin planning for a complete withdrawal of U.S. forces at the end of 2014.

In a two-hour meeting here, Susan E. Rice, President Obama’s top national security adviser, told Karzai that if he failed to sign the bilateral security agreement by the end of this year, the United States would have “no choice” but to prepare for withdrawal, according to a statement by the National Security Council in Washington.

Karzai told Rice that he would sign only after the United States helps his government begin peace talks with the Taliban and agrees to release all 17 Afghan citizens being held in the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba, according to Afghan and U.S. officials.

In addition to those new demands, the Afghan leader reiterated that he will not sign if “another [U.S.] soldier steps foot into an Afghan home,” Karzai spokesman Aimal Faizi said. The United States has already promised to show “restraint” in “home entries” by U.S. troops and to carry them out only in conjunction with Afghan troops, but the tactic remains a part of U.S. operations against some insurgents here.

If I were a cynical son of a bitch, I would be thinking that he is deliberately trying to encourage the Taliban to mount attacks to against the Afghan Presidential Elections in the Spring, so that he can hang onto power.

Wait ……… I AM a cynical son of a bitch.

Seriously. Just call his damn bluff, and either he capitulates, or the Taliban plays piñata with his mutilated corpse.

Either way, it is a win for the United States, and for the Afghan people.