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Karzai calls for quicker NATO exit

KABUL, Afghanistan, April 20 (UPI) -- Afghanistan's president said a faster exit of foreign forces would prevent repeats of episodes such as U.S. soldiers photographed with suicide bomber remains.

Hamid Karzai called for an "accelerated and full transition of security responsibilities to Afghan forces, so Afghanistan can take over its own destiny, and thus no such things can be repeated by the foreign forces in Afghanistan."

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He condemned the 2-year-old photos as "inhumane and provocative."

"It is such a disgusting act to take photos with body parts and then share it with others," he said in a statement.

The two photos, published by the Los Angeles Times Wednesday, show soldiers from the 82nd Airborne 4th Brigade Combat Team in 2010 posing with bloodied remains of Afghan insurgents -- including next to the mangled body of a suicide bomber hoisted by his ankles.

The Obama administration roundly condemned the actions shown in the photos, and the U.S. military launched an investigation into the incidents, which only now come to light after an unidentified U.S. soldier provided 18 photos to the newspaper.

The Times said it published "the least gruesome" two of the 18 images it received.

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The international NATO force is to wind down its combat role by the end of 2014, but growing numbers of troop-contributing nations have said they will pull out their forces next year.

The United States and its NATO allies finalized the wind-down plan Wednesday, paving the way for President Barack Obama to announce at a NATO summit meeting in Chicago next month the nearly 11-year-old conflict is close to an end.

The Taliban denounced the photos as depicting "gruesome acts."

The militant group -- which the United Nations says was responsible for 80 percent of Afghan civilian casualties in 2011 -- condemned Afghan soldiers present in some of the shots.

"Some Afghan hirelings ... posed in the photos, at their masters' orders, to scorn the remains of martyrs," the Islamist group said in a statement.

The photos' release was another in a series of recent episodes that increased tensions against the U.S. presence in Afghanistan.

In January, a video appeared on the Internet showing four U.S. Marines laughing as they urinated on Afghan corpses. In February, the inadvertent burning of copies of the Koran at a U.S. base triggered riots that left 30 dead and led to the deaths of six Americans. In March, a U.S. Army sergeant went on a nighttime shooting rampage in two Afghan villages, killing 17 people, mostly women and children.

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A poll by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press indicated Thursday 59 percent of undecided U.S. voters support the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan.

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