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  KABUL, Afghanistan -- President Hamid Karzai insisted Thursday that the United States confine its troops to major bases in Afghanistan by next year, as the Taliban announced that they were suspending peace talks with the Americans, both of which served to complicate the Obama administration's plans for an orderly exit from the country.

Mr. Karzai's abrupt planning shift was at odds with a pledge offered hours earlier by President Barack Obama to stick to a 2014 withdrawal schedule for troops in Afghanistan. It also ran up against the Pentagon's assessment that Afghan security forces were not yet ready to take over control of the country.

Mr. Karzai's surprise announcement, which would confine U.S troops to their bases a year earlier than Mr. Obama proposed, was initially made at a Thursday meeting with Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, who spent a fraught two days apologizing in person to the Afghan president for the massacre of 16 civilians by a U.S soldier Sunday at a village in Kandahar province. Upon Mr. Panetta's arrival, an Afghan interpreter working for coalition forces crashed a stolen pickup truck near his plane.

Further fraying U.S efforts to preserve some degree of control over the Afghanistan exit strategy, Taliban insurgents announced Thursday that they had broken off preliminary peace talks with the U.S side. While the move may have been coincidental, it imperiled another crucial element of the U.S exit strategy -- brokering peace talks between insurgents and the Afghan government.

"International forces should leave the villages and move to their bases," Mr. Karzai said, according to an account of the meeting released by his office. He also insisted that "both sides should work on a plan to complete the security transition process by 2013 instead of 2014."

Both Afghan and U.S officials scrambled to put the best possible face on yet another rift between the two allies, coming at what both hope will be a final stage in negotiations between their diplomats on a long-term strategic partnership, and at a time when some White House officials have been advocating an accelerated withdrawal.

Some suggested that Mr. Karzai was merely reacting to anger over the massacre -- and to the U.S move Wednesday to send the staff sergeant accused of opening fire on the civilians out of Afghanistan to Kuwait. They also noted that under the timetable agreed to at a 2010 NATO summit in Lisbon, the transition of security responsibility from the U.S military and its NATO partners to Afghan forces already called for foreign forces to adopt a more supportive role by 2013, although they would be actively engaged in combat until 2014, as needed. (NYtimes March 16, 2012 )