WASHINGTON, Nov 15: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Monday that the night raids that Afghan President Hamid Karzai wanted to be stopped were having a good impact while Gen David Petraeus warned that the US-Afghan partnership could be “untenable” if Kabul insisted on a premature withdrawal of Nato troops from Afghanistan.

“We believe that the use of intelligence driven precision targeted operations against high-value insurgents and their networks is a key component of our comprehensive civilian military operations,” said Secretary Clinton.

In an interview to The Washington Post published on Sunday, President Karzai called for a halt to night raids by US Special Forces and also urged the Obama administration to reduce its troops in Afghanistan.

Secretary Clinton said the US shared Mr Karzai’s concerns and had discussed them with him but this was not the time to stop the operations. “There is no question that they are having a significant impact on the insurgent leadership and the networks that they operate,” she said.

“We believe that these operations are in the best interest of the Afghan people, the Afghan government and the Isaf troops who are working with their Afghan counterparts to secure the country,” she added.

In a separate interview with the Washington Post, published on Monday, Gen Petraeus, the head of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan, suggested that President Karzai’s remarks could undermine the US-led effort there and said he was “astonished and disappointed” with Mr Karzai’s call for reduced military operations and that some raids in the south be discontinued.

Republican lawmakers, who defeated President Barack Obama’s Democratic Party in this month’s congressional elections, also criticised Mr Karzai and backed the US administration’s current Afghan policy.

“I’m just stunned,” Senator Lindsey Graham, a senior Republican lawmaker, told ABC News. “The security gains are obvious. We’re not there yet, but we’re moving in the right direction. And to take the night raids off the table would be a disaster.”

Senator John McCain, a formal Republican presidential candidate, argued that the demand for an early withdrawal of US troops was based on nothing more than politics.

“You don’t fight and conduct wars that way,” he said while also rejecting President Obama’s plans to begin withdrawing some troops in July 2011.

In her statement on Monday, Secretary Clinton also opposed those who support a rapid withdrawal.

“The pace of transition of security responsibility obviously depends on the ability of the Afghan National Security Forces and the Afghan National Police forces to be able to take charge. That’s why this a conditions based, gradual transition process, not some one-time event,” she said.

In Kabul, Gen Petraeus met Ashraf Ghani, the Afghan official in charge of the transition process, after reading Mr Karzai’s interview in the Post and discussed the situation with him. A planned Sunday meeting with President Karzai was rescheduled, but both US and Afghan officials insisted that it was not cancelled due to the tensions.

A US defence official told CNN that Gen Petraeus felt the views expressed by Mr Karzai “makes it untenable for us to have a partnership”.