KABUL, April 13 (Xinhuanet) -- Afghan president Hamid Karzai called for long-term security partnership with the United States after meeting with US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld here Wednesday.

    "Afghanistan has gone through a very difficult period of its life in the past two and half decades. As a result of my conversations with the Afghan people, the conclusion we have drawn is that Afghan people want a longer-term relationship with the United States," Karzai said in a joint press conference after meeting with Donald Rumsfeld.

    However, he declined to elaborate whether the proposed strategic partnership includes the establishment of US permanent military bases in this post-Taliban central Asian state.

    The matter came in light just months after the US senator John McCann, during a tour to Kabul, proposed the suggestion of having US permanent military bases in Afghanistan to safeguard Washington's interests in the region.

    "They want this relationship to be a whole including sustained economic relationship, political relationship and most important of all a strategic security relationship that would enable Afghanistan to defend itself and to stop the possible interference in Afghanistan," Karzai stressed.

    He also confirmed that during his last visit to the United States, he raised the issue with the US President Bush.

    Afghan government's suggestion in this regard "will be sent through official channels to the government of the United States," added Karzai.

    For another part, the US Defense Secretary Rumsfeld avoided to go into details by saying, "I think we find ways we can be helpful. It may be training. But we think more in term of what are achieving rather than the question of military bases here."

    Rumsfeld, who is on his ninth tour to Afghanistan since the collapse of Taliban in late 2001, has earlier visited American troops in troubled Kandahar and Zabul provinces in south Afghanistan. Enditem