THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

But they really, really need a signed accord by years end to do so. And now, as the dealine approaches, Karzai of the Afghans is acting as if he doesn't want that.

For the second time in a week, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan has picked a high-profile fight with his American allies, in the midst of a grand council that he convened to support a long-term security agreement with the United States.

American officials reacted with anger and exasperation on Saturday after Mr. Karzai publicly accused American Special Forces troops of killing civilians in a raid on an Afghan home; American officials said it was an Afghan-led raid that killed only insurgents.

And Mr. Karzai’s aides continued to drive home the message that even if the council, or loya jirga, ratifies the Bilateral Security Agreement with the United States, Mr. Karzai will not sign it until next year, after a presidential election to choose his successor, but before he leaves office.

It left many people wondering why Mr. Karzai had convened a loya jirga, bringing to Kabul 2,500 Afghan notables from around the country, dismissing most employees from work for six days and locking down a capital city of five million so thoroughly that all roads to it were blocked from Wednesday through Monday.

Mr. Karzai continued to insist that he would not sign, even after another long telephone call from Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday night, warning the Afghan leader that if the agreement was not signed within a month, there would be no agreement to sign.

Mr. Karzai’s spokesman, Aimal Faizi, bluntly said Saturday that Mr. Karzai felt that Mr. Kerry, in a conversation Mr. Faizi described as “tense,” was threatening him. “When the U.S. secretary of state says if there is no agreement there will be no security, we can say there is pressure, there is threats,” Mr. Faizi said.

American officials have insisted that without an agreement this year, they would not have time to prepare an American force for its mission after 2014, which the security agreement calls for.

The Afghans dismiss that. “We don’t believe there’s any zero option,” Mr. Faizi said. “We believe if they have waited until now, they can wait five more months.”

“There is no deadline for us,” he added. “We have said that in the past.”

If sure would be nice if, just this one time, John Kerry were a man of his word.