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Taliban murder election candidate, attack convoy

Suspected Taliban rebels shot dead a candidate in next month's legislative elections in an ambush in southern Afghanistan yesterday, while an attack on a US military convoy wounded three American troops near the capital, authorities said.

Militants attacked the US service members as they were patrolling Friday about 40km east of Kabul, a US military statement said. An attack helicopter rushed to the site, but the rebels had fled.

The wounded were in stable condition after being evacuated to Bagram, the main US base in Afghanistan, about an hour's drive north of Kabul, the statement said.

Attacks on the US military so close to Kabul are rare and Friday's assault occurred less than a week after a roadside bomb in the capital blew up near a convoy of US Embassy vehicles, wounding two American staff members.

The assaults come amid a major upsurge in attacks by Taliban-led rebels that have left more than 1,100 people dead in the past six months. They also come less than a month before landmark legislative elections, which the insurgents have vowed to subvert.

In the latest attack directly linked to the polls, gunmen on Sunday ambushed a parliamentary candidate, Adiq Ullah, as he was driving in Uruzgan province, killing him and wounding two others in his vehicle, said provincial Gov. Jan Mohammed Khan.

He blamed the Taliban for the murder. Security forces pursued the insurgents, but they escaped, the governor said.

Ullah's killing brings to four the number of candidates killed in the lead-up to the polls. Four election workers have also been murdered and several election offices have been rocketed.

Meanwhile Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh arrived in Afghanistan Sunday for the first visit by an Indian leader in 29 years, carrying fresh aid offers and seeking to blunt rival Pakistan's influence.

Singh's special plane landed at Kabul airport at 9:40am, Khaleeq Ahmad, a spokesman for President Hamid Karzai said ahead of the Indian premier's meeting with the Afghan leader.

His two-day visit is the first by an Indian head of government to Afghanistan since 1976 when then premier Indira Gandhi flew to Kabul.

India, one of the six top donors to Afghanistan, has pledged US$500 million in aid to Kabul since 2002 and Singh is expected to unveil fresh assistance of 50 million dollars during his visit.

"The fresh assistance would be on small developmental projects benefiting grassroot levels and this would help in the reconstruction of the country," Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran said Friday in New Delhi.

"Although we are involved in major projects in the infrastructure sector we felt the time has come to shift focus to the local community level."

Saran also said Delhi was helping in the modernisation of the Afghan army and police force and has trained 800 personnel, including diplomats, since 2003.

However, he lashed out at Pakistan for not granting transit rights to Indian aid for landlocked Afghanistan.

"This will continue to be a constraint in our effort to assist Afghanistan but we are working on the improvement of the infrastructure through Iran," he said.

Saran said India had close ties with India-educated Karzai even before he took over the reins in December 2001. He also said the war-ravaged nation's recovery was of political and strategic interest to India.

"India wants Afghanistan to emerge as a democratic, independent, sovereign country fully in control of its own destiny and we believe the relationship with India will contribute to that," he said.

During Singh's visit former Afghan king Zahir Shah will inaugurate an India-aided project to build a new parliament building.

India enjoyed cosy ties with most Afghan groups but these were jolted in 1979 when it refused to oppose the invasion of Afghanistan by its Cold War ally the Soviet Union.

However, New Delhi regained part of the goodwill by backing the Northern Alliance against the Taliban who were ousted from power in late 2001 by US-led forces with the support of Pakistan, which abandoned the hardline student militia after the September 11, 2001 attacks on United States.

Saran said India would offer help to crush remnants of the Taliban, who have threatened to disrupt the parliamentary elections.

"The stability of Afghanistan and its economic recovery continues to be hampered by Taliban elements and these elements have to be kept under control.

"We have offered our full support in dealing with this newly-emerging threat," he said.
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