Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Thursday his government was continuing to press the United States to release Afghan nationals being held in the US Guantanamo facility. "We want the return of those prisoners as soon as possible," Karzai told a news conference as he concluded a one-day visit to Denmark. "This is an issue that we have been engaged in for a long time with the US and UN system," Karzai said, adding that he was following the news of the current hunger strike among prisoners at Guantanamo Bay where some 100 detainees are reported to be refusing food.

Revelations that the CIA handed cash payments to Afghanistan's presidential office provoked criticism but little surprise from opposition groups and transparency campaigners in Kabul on Tuesday. The New York Times reported on Monday that the US Central Intelligence Agency had delivered tens of millions of dollars in suitcases and backpacks to President Hamid Karzai's office over the past decade.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Monday confirmed that his government received money from the US Central Intelligence Agency, following reports of cash being handed over in suitcases and backpacks. "Yes, the NSC of Afghanistan has received money from CIA in the past 10 years. The amount was not big, rather it was small," Karzai said in a statement, referring to the National Security Council which is part of the president's office.

The CIA has delivered tens of millions of dollars in cash packed in suitcases and backpacks to the office of Afghan President Hamid Karzai for more than a decade, the New York Times reported Monday. "We called it 'ghost money'," Khalil Roman, Karzai's deputy chief of staff from 2002 to 2005, told the Times. "It came in secret, and it left in secret." The money was aimed at obtaining influence, but instead fueled rampant corruption, current and former officials told the newspaper.