KABUL, Feb 18: Presidents Hamid Karzai and Barack Obama spoke on the phone for the first time exactly four weeks after Obama’s inauguration, Karzai’s office said on Wednesday.

The two presidents spoke about security issues and Afghanistan’s presidential elections in August, Karzai’s office said. Obama called the Afghan leader on Tuesday, the same day Obama announced he was deploying an additional 17,000 US forces to Afghanistan.

Karzai admitted last week that close to a month after Obama’s inauguration he still had not spoken with the US leader.

The Afghan president also said there was tension in the US-Afghan relationship, mostly over civilian casualties.

Obama’s decision to send 17,000 more troops answers commanders’ requests for more forces to battle an increasingly violent Taliban insurgency. Taliban attacks have spiked the last three years and insurgents now control wide swaths of countryside.

“This increase is necessary to stabilise a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, which has not received the strategic attention, direction and resources it urgently requires,” Obama said in a statement.—AP