The United States is manipulating politics and attempting to exercise “19th century classical imperialism” in Afghanistan because it wants a “client regime” in Kabul, says an American antiwar activist.

In a phone interview with Press TV on Tuesday, Rick Rozoff, with the Stop NATO International Network, said Afghanistan “since 1918 had a rich history of parliamentary democracy, in many ways even currently, much more diverse than the situation that obtains in the United States where, as is infamously known, there are two major political parties that have a monopoly on both houses of Congress and the White House.”

And now, Rozoff added, we see “the US stepped in and claimed to be the defender of representative government, of parliamentary democracy; that is a bitter irony.”

“What is painfully obvious is that the US and NATO want to maintain a client regime in Kabul,” Rozoff said.

US Secretary of State John Kerry held meetings with Afghanistan’s two presidential candidates Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani and incumbent President Hamid Karzai on Friday and Saturday, trying to strike a deal ending the deadlock over the June 14 election run-off between the leading contenders.

On Saturday, Kerry said the Afghan presidential rivals have agreed to a full audit of ballots. In a joint meeting with Ghani and Abdullah, Kerry said both candidates have accepted to stand by the eventual result of the audit.

Rozoff says Washington is only interested in securing a “bilateral security agreement or status of forces agreement that permits the United States and its Western military allies to maintain not only a longstanding but ultimately an indefinite military presence in the country.”