Violence mars Afghan constitutional talks

As hundreds of delegates flood Kabul for this week's convention to adopt a constitution and pave the way for next year's elections, a weekend of bloodshed and fresh kidnappings has underscored the instability still gripping Afghanistan.

Some 200 delegates had arrived by Sunday with the rest of the 500 due over the next couple of days, a constitutional commission official said.

Provincial representatives in Kabul, Kandahar in the south, western Herat and southeast Khost were due to complete the final elections of loya jirga delegates yesterday, said Farooq Wardak, director of the constitutional commission secretariat.

Resurgent Taliban militants have threatened attacks during the loya jirga (grand assembly) and have called on Afghans to boycott presidential elections due in June.

The polls will mark Afghani-stan's transition to democracy after the decades of conflict which have ravaged the Central Asian country.

More than 20 people were injured in a bomb attack on a crowded shopping area in the former southern Taliban stronghold of Kandahar on Saturday. Afghan authorities blamed members of the ousted Islamic militia.

President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack as "a cowardly act aimed at terrorizing" Afghans ahead of the loya jirga.

The loya jirga, due to open on Wednesday, will debate and ratify the new constitution which in its present form sets out a strong presidential system of government.

Critics, mainly among powerful mujahedin and Northern Alliance factions, have called for a prime ministerial post to dilute the powers of the president.

Karzai said the recent wave of attacks would not sway Afghanistan from its chosen path towards peace and reconstruction.

Two years after the fall of the Taliban, its loyalists are in the throes of a resurgence, killing aid workers, US and Afghan soldiers and government targets.

Thousands of US air and ground troops are still combing Afghanistan's barren mountains and plains for Taliban and al-Qaeda remnants.

US aircraft on Saturday accidentally shot dead nine Afghan children playing in a village in southeast Ghazni province while targeting a suspected "terrorist."

Scores of Afghan civilians have been mistakenly killed by US forces, prompting warnings that such blunders would only add to "a sense of insecurity and fear."

"This incident, which follows similar incidents, adds to a sense of insecurity and fear in the country," UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said.

UN spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva warned that such mistakes had a "negative impact" on the population, sections of which in the south and southeast are already hostile to US troops, if not actual supporters of the Taliban or other anti-government groups.

The south and southeast have been wracked by a surge in violence blamed on resurgent Taliban and their allies which has claimed around 400 lives over the past four months. US troops come under almost daily attacks along the rugged border with Pakistan.

Militants have increasingly targeted aid and reconstruction workers as well as US and Afghan troops in an apparent bid to undermine urgently-needed rebuilding work.

Two Indians working on renovating the key Kabul-Kandahar highway were kidnapped Saturday by armed men in violence-torn Zabul province in southeast Afghanistan.