The United States, which counts Afghan President Hamid Karzai as a key ally in the region, raised the case with visiting Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, calling on Kabul to uphold Afghan citizens' constitutional right to choose their faith."We hope that the Afghan constitution is going to be upheld and in our view, if it's upheld, then of course he'll be found to be innocent," said Nicholas Burns, the State Department's third-ranked diplomat. ...
"While we understand the complexity of a case like this and we certainly will respect the sovereignty of the Afghan authorities and the Afghan system, from an American point of view, people should be free to choose their own religion," Burns told reporters, flanked by Abdullah.
Abdullah said his government had "nothing to do" with the judicial case, but added: "I hope that through our constitutional process, there will be a satisfactory result."
U.S. and allies press Afghanistan on Christian convert
By Paul Eckert, Asia Correspondent
Thx...I hadn't seen that.
It's all a nomadic tribal people have. The religion grew out of extremem insecurity. No way they will back down. The only way Asia will reform is if ahem something like a bird flu pandemic reduces their population by a factor of 40% or so. Otherwise you are asking a people to turn away from a belief that protected them for centuries from outside domination. Well sort of. Definitely a hard culture to crack as it were.
""While we understand the complexity of a case like this and we certainly will respect the sovereignty of the Afghan authorities and the Afghan system, from an American point of view, people should be free to choose their own religion," Burns told reporters, flanked by Abdullah."
This is soooo typical of this sissy administration. If the Afgans kill this man and Bush and the other Mohammaden loving clowns in the administration do nothing to seriously hurt Karzai and the rest of the thugocracy in Afganistan, I will work my ancient tail off to see to it that no Republican gets re-elected to Congress in the fall without a promise of impeachment for Bush! Damn this makes me mad! We've got young people dying out there so these human maggots can execute Christians and Nicky Burns (who was just about the biggest joke in Athens when he was the ambassador there)can give them assurances we will respect their sovereinty?