New Afghan leader Hamid Karzai formally took power yesterday, promising to end the strife that in two decades reduced Afghanistan to ruins and sucked in the armies of superpowers.
Overshadowing the ceremonies were reports that US warplanes had killed 65 people as they travelled to Kabul to attend the inauguration, bombing a convoy of tribal elders in the mistaken belief they were the enemy.
US officials insisted however the convoy had been carrying "Taliban and al-Qaeda" leaders and had fired at its planes.
Pashtun aristocrat Karzai was sworn in as head of an interim government in the country's first peaceful and undisputed handover of power for 28 years.
Karzai's government has been charged with rebuilding the war-shattered country after the overthrow of its former Taliban rulers, who sheltered the Saudi-born Osama bin Laden and his fighters, blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks on America that killed more than 3,000 people.
The Taliban regime has been routed by a US bombing campaign which, according to critics, has also killed thousands of Afghan civilians.
"I would like to promise you that I will fulfil my mission to bring peace to Afghanistan," Prime Minister Karzai told about 2,000 tribal leaders, foreign diplomats and a US general attending the inauguration.
Karzai administered the oath of office to the other 29 members of his interim government, expected to rule for six months, and embraced outgoing president Burhanuddin Rabbani.
Top US commander General Tommy Franks, attending the event, said bin Laden had not been sighted in the past week.
"There really are only about three possibilities. He can be in Tora Bora or in that area dead, he can be somewhere else in Afghanistan and still alive or perhaps he may have gotten over into Pakistan," he said.
Franks said there would be an investigation into the convoy bombing, but added: "I will tell you, having been in touch with my headquarters, that at this point we believe it was a good target."
British Royal Marines, the vanguard of an international peacekeeping force expected to swell to at least 1,500 in days, patrolled the capital for the first time to help preserve calm in a city ravaged by conflict since the Soviet invasion on Christmas Day 1979.
Soldiers of the Northern Alliance which swept into Kabul on Nov. 13 in the wake of the retreating Taliban arrested three suspected armed fighters of the fundamentalist militia in the Interior Ministry compound.
Elsewhere, US forces questioned captured al-Qaeda fighters and searched the cave-riddled mountains of eastern Afghanistan for bin Laden.
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said more troops would be sent to find the man with a US$25 million price on his head, as Washington left the nation-building mission to its European and Muslim allies.
US defense officials said AC-130 gunships and navy fighters had attacked and destroyed the convoy in eastern Afghanistan believed to be carrying "leadership" of the Taliban or al-Qaeda.
"I'm told by Centcom [Central Command] that we were fired on twice by the convoy using anti-aircraft missiles, which they took as a hostile act and proceeded to attack the convoy," said the US diplomatic mission official in Kabul.
Residents of the area said the tribal elders, supporters of Karzai, had come under attack after informers apparently told US contacts that they were pro-Taliban.
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