By PETER BAKER
WASHINGTON — President Obama sent a letter to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan this week, as Mr. Obama tried to ease the tensions that have flared since his visit to Kabul last month and to restore the two nations’ partnership at a time of accelerating military operations against Taliban insurgents.
Aides to Mr. Obama described the message as a thank-you letter for receiving him on short notice in March. They said that it did not directly address Mr. Karzai’s angry outbursts against the United States and its allies following the visit, but did include a recommitment to joint efforts in Afghanistan and renewal of Mr. Obama’s “willingness to work together,” as the White House put it.
Advisers to Mr. Obama declared the flare-up in tensions closed and said Mr. Karzai’s scheduled visit to Washington in May was “absolutely” still on, despite earlier hints that it might be canceled.
“We ought to calm the rhetoric,” Gen. James L. Jones, Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, told reporters on Air Force One as the president returned from a short trip to Europe. He added: “This matter is really behind us now, and I think you’ll see that in the weeks ahead.”
Mr. Karzai’s speeches in recent days laid bare the rift between Kabul and Washington as he lashed out at foreigners for lecturing him about corruption in Afghanistan.
In his six-hour visit to the country on March 28, which was not announced in advance, Mr. Obama pressed Mr. Karzai to clean up some of the pervasive corruption and improve the functioning of his government as a way of undercutting popular support for the insurgency.
In the days afterward, Mr. Karzai accused foreigners of manipulating last year’s elections and tried to deflect allegations that his own allies committed widespread fraud. He complained that American-led military forces risked looking like invaders and turning the Taliban movement into a legitimate national resistance against occupation.
At one point he said that if foreigners did not stop treating his administration as a puppet government, he would be tempted to join the Taliban himself.
General Jones suggested on Friday that those comments had been blown out of proportion. “President Karzai did not intend to create any damage to the relationship,” he said. He added that Mr. Karzai’s job is so difficult that “he probably is provoked in one way or the other to make certain statements that can be misinterpreted.”
General Jones added that “there was far too much reporting on lecturing and making corruption the centerpiece of everything we talked about” during Mr. Obama’s visit.
Yet it was General Jones who focused on the corruption issue in briefing reporters during the flight to Afghanistan in March, telling reporters that Mr. Karzai “needs to be seized with how important” the issue was.
Speaking Friday, General Jones said he and Mr. Obama both left Afghanistan “fortified” and “reassured” by the talks with Mr. Karzai, and that it was now time to “get back to regular order here.”
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