PARIS, Jan 16: The United States is trying to turn Afghanistan into its military base to threaten regional powers and control economic resources in Central Asia, a renowned Afghan poet said on Wednesday.

Abdul Latif Pedram, also a political analyst, further alleged that the current Afghan interim government was a Washington puppet and its leader Hamid Karzai was working for the Central Intelligence Agency.

“My understanding of the situation in Afghanistan is that the American programme has been a previously-orchestrated, precise and long-term one to find a military base for controlling Central Asia,” the Paris-based poet said.

“This is a puppet regime and there is no national sovereignty in the country.”

In an interview, Pedram, an ethnic Tajik, warned that a bloody military confrontation would engulf the region in six months’ time and an anti-US resistance struggle flare up in Afghanistan.

“It is a bloody issue inside the country. After the current excitement drops a war will break out in Asia” after the Americans start attacking Iran, Iraq and Syria using its base in Afghanistan, he said.

The Tehran-educated poet, originally from Afghanistan’s northeastern province of Badakhshan, said the arrest and the transfer of Afghan Taliban troops to the US base in Cuba was an insult to Afghans.

“The Taliban are criminals, but they should be tried inside Afghanistan. It is an insult to Afghans that the Americans tie their hands and transfer them to Cuba,” he said.

Thirty Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters linked to Osama bin Laden arrived in Cuba on Monday, three days after the arrival in shackles and chains of a first batch of 20 prisoners.—AFP