Former Afghan president Hamid Karzai on Sunday urged the United States to return his country's assets, one day after Washington unveiled a plan to set aside half of $7 billion frozen Afghan assets on U.S. soil to possibly satisfy lawsuits over the September 11 attacks.

U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday signed an executive order that seeks to split the $7 billion between funding humanitarian aid for cash-strapped Afghanistan and creating a trust fund to compensate the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Karzai said the Afghan people share the grief of the American people have suffered due to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, yet no Afghan was involved in the attack and therefore Biden has to reconsider his decision.

"Holding Afghanistan's money on any name is unfair and unjust. That money belongs to the people of Afghanistan ... I am calling on President Joe Biden to return the money to the people of Afghanistan," Karzai told a press conference in Kabul.

Karzai said that all Afghans, including members of the Taliban-led caretaker government, take a united stand to get the Afghan money back to their country.

Da Afghanistan Bank (DAB), Afghanistan's central bank, on Saturday also criticized Washington's plan, saying its assets had been invested in the United States in line with international practices, and belonged to the people of Afghanistan.

"DAB considers the latest decision of USA on blocking FX (foreign exchange) reserves and allocating them to irrelevant purposes, injustice to the people of Afghanistan," the central bank said in a statement.

"[DAB] will never accept if the FX reserves of Afghanistan is paid under the name of compensation or humanitarian assistance to others and wants the reversal of the decision and release of all FX reserves of Afghanistan," it added.

The United States, following its exit from Afghanistan in August 2021, has frozen more than $9 billion of assets of DAB, a move widely seen as the major factor leading to the current economic crisis in the war-torn Asian country.

(With input from Reuters)