President Hamid Karzai is due to step down as Afghanistan’s head of state a few months before NATO troops' scheduled withdrawal from the Southwest Asian nation in late 2014. Karzai is the only leader the post-Taliban Afghan state has had, and his exit raises serious questions about the stability of the country beyond 2014. More important, the end of the Karzai presidency is complicating negotiations with the Taliban — and those weren’t progressing well to begin with. In an interview published Tuesday by the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Karzai said the leader of the Afghan jihadist movement, Mullah Mohammad Omar, could run for president in elections due to take place early next year.