Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday said Washington should respect his country's judicial authority after the release of 65 alleged Taliban fighters triggered U.S. condemnation.

"Afghanistan is a sovereign country. If the Afghan judicial authorities decide to release the prisoners, it is of no concern to the U.S. and should be of no concern to the U.S.," Karzai told reporters in Ankara.

The U.S. intelligence chief said Tuesday he does not expect Afghan President Hamid Karzai to sign a security agreement with the United States that would allow American troops to stay after 2014.

Washington has repeatedly appealed to Karzai to sign the bilateral security agreement (BSA) negotiated last year but James Clapper, director of national intelligence, said he had given up hope that the Afghan president would endorse the deal.

Millions of dollars in U.S. aid is flowing into Afghanistan even though the ministries receiving the funds are incapable of managing such large sums of money, an official U.S. report said Thursday.

Despite moves by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to boost safeguards over direct assistance to the Afghan government "a number of troubling issues remain," a special watchdog found.

Afghanistan's lead negotiator on a security deal with the United States said Thursday he was optimistic of imminent progress even though the two countries are currently locked in a bitter stalemate.

The Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) allowing some U.S. troops to stay in Afghanistan after 2014 hit the buffers late last year when President Hamid Karzai made a surprise decision not to sign it.

U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Thursday said the Afghan president's foot-dragging on a crucial bilateral security agreement risked leaving Washington no time to plan its post-combat mission.

"You can't just keep deferring and deferring because at some point the realities of planning and budgeting collide," the Pentagon chief told reporters aboard his plane en route to Warsaw.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai suspects the United States may have backed insurgent-style attacks to undermine his government but has no evidence to support his theory, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.

Karzai, whose relations with Washington have steadily deteriorated over the years, has compiled a list of dozens of attacks that he believes the U.S. government may have been involved in, the Post wrote, citing unnamed Afghan officials.

President Hamid Karzai on Saturday signaled that a deal to allow U.S. troops to stay in Afghanistan was close to collapse as the NATO combat mission withdraws after a decade of fighting the Taliban.

Late last year, Karzai made a surprise decision not to promptly sign the bilateral security agreement (BSA) with the U.S., despite a "loya jirga" national assembly voting for him to do so.

President Hamid Karzai on Wednesday accused the United States of killing seven children and one woman in an airstrike in central Afghanistan, in an incident set to further damage frayed ties between the two allies.

Relations between Washington and Kabul have been rocky for years, and negotiations over an agreement that would allow some U.S. troops to remain in the country after this year have broken down into a long-running public dispute.

Afghan forces will provide security for the vast majority of polling stations in the upcoming presidential elections, an official said Saturday, a key test for the country as NATO troops withdraw.

"Based on our assessments, security can be provided to 6,431 polling centers out of 6,845 centers. The plan will cover 93.96 per cent of the country," interior ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi told reporters in Kabul.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Friday condemned U.S. troops for killing a four-year-old boy in the southern province of Helmand, in an incident set to add fresh strain to troubled relations between Washington and Kabul.

Helmand governor Naeem Baloch told Karzai during a meeting in Kabul about the shooting, which comes as the U.S. and Afghanistan wrangle over a deal to allow some U.S. troops to remain in the country after this year.