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Taliban comeback out of the question, Afghani leader says

President Hamid Karzai said on Monday that there was no Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan but threats remained from foreign terrorists, whom he blamed for the attack two days ago on a bus full of German peacekeepers.

Flanked by his interior minister and military chief of staff, Karzai gave an upbeat account of the situation in Afghanistan at a news briefing on Monday in the presidential palace.

He described the fundamentalist Taliban movement as a spent force, but he warned that foreign terrorists could continue to make Afghanistan a target, as they could any other country.

"I am not worried about the resurgence of the Taliban," Karzai said. "The Taliban movement as a movement is finished, is gone."

Two groups of Taliban had been roundly defeated in fighting in southern Afghanistan in the last few weeks, he said.

"Are we concerned about terrorist activities of the kind that occur at the borders or inside Afghanistan, of the kind that happened the day before Monday? Yes," he said.

Four German peacekeepers were killed and 31 wounded on Saturday when a suicide bomber blew his car up alongside a German military bus on a main road into Kabul. An Afghan teenager walking along the road was also killed in what was the most serious attack against the international security force in the 18 months of its mandate in the Afghan capital.

Karzai said he could guarantee that the suicide bomber would be found to be a foreigner, not an Afghan, but he did not say how the authorities knew this.

"I don't think we have a problem with those elements of the Taliban that are Afghans, the majority of them are back in their homes. The problem is mostly foreign in our case, the backing is as such as well," he said.

The interior minister, Ali Ahmad Jalali, blamed Afghanistan's neighbor, Pakistan, for its part in the continuing security problem in the south and southeast of Afghanistan, saying those Taliban forces attacking Afghan forces were using Pakistan as a refuge.

"The one thing we learned so far is that the terrorists and antigovernment elements cannot stay for long inside the country, so they take refuge in these areas along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border," he said.

Karzai was showing his now familiar optimistic attitude to the state of affairs in Afghanistan. He denied that the main Kabul-Kandahar road building venture, a pet project of his, had been delayed because of security concerns, insisting that the only hold-ups had been logistical, while waiting for the arrival of equipment.

Now that the necessary equipment had reached Afghanistan, the work would begin, he said. A special 700-man police force is being sent to guard the road, he added, an indication that security is still a major concern.
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