Incoming Afghan Premier Meets With Former King

New Afghan leader Hamid Karzai received the blessing of the country’s exiled former king Tuesday and said he is determined to “fight terrorism to the end” and revive the war-wrecked economy.

As if to underscore the importance of the moment, the 87-year-old king, Mohammad Zaher Shah, stepped outside his heavily guarded Roman villa for a rare appearance before reporters.

Karzai, who will be sworn in as interim Afghan prime minister Saturday, said the king discussed “a lot of things” about leading the country. He did not elaborate.

“He has been giving me advice for many years,” said Karzai, a distant relative of the king’s and also a Pushtun, Afghanistan’s dominant ethnic group.

“The moment I sat with him, he wished me very, very well and said he was very, very glad that I have taken this charge.”

The king, considered the symbolic father of Afghans, presented Karzai with a personal copy of the Koran, encased in a green leather box. Karzai said the Muslim holy book will guide him after he takes office. He kissed the Koran and the king’s hands in thanks.

“This gives me tremendous hope, tremendous hope, that under the guidance of the holy Koran and his majesty’s blessings, I’m going back home,” Karzai said.

The encounter capped a day in which Karzai received a pledge from Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi for $38 million in government aid, a promise from the media magnate-politician to fund a television station and a radio station, and a minute of applause from lawmakers in the Chamber of Deputies.

Italy has offered as many as 600 troops for an international peacekeeping force that is to begin moving into Afghanistan under British leadership by Saturday.

Karzai said the peacekeepers, who may eventually number more than 6,000, would be welcome to stay “as long as it takes for Afghan stability.”

He said the creation of an Afghan national army would be key to preventing warlords from undermining security.

“We have to create an Afghanistan in which all people live under the rule of law, and . . . warlordism and gunrunning must end,” he said. “That is a prerequisite for peace.”

He said his top priority is to maintain peace and stability, “and to fight terrorism to the end in Afghanistan and in the rest of the world.”

“And then within Afghanistan, [the priorities are] to arrange for our children to go to school as soon as possible and to provide the Afghan people with a fair chance to engage in economic activity and to live a better life,” he said.

Karzai was selected to head Afghanistan’s interim administration at U.N.-sponsored talks in Germany this month. Karzai, who was part of the king’s delegation, will rule along with a 29-member Cabinet for six months.

The king, seen by many as a unifying figure, then will convene a grand national assembly, or loya jirga, to choose a government to lead Afghanistan for two years while a constitution is drafted and a judicial system and police force are put in place.

The king, who has lived in Rome since his 1973 ouster in a coup, could leave for Afghanistan within the next month or two to start making plans for the tribal assembly, said Zalmai Rassoul, an advisor.

He and another aide, Rehim Sherzoi, were to return to Kabul, the Afghan capital, with Karzai to represent the king at Saturday’s swearing-in ceremony.

In his appearance with Berlusconi, Karzai said women in his country will be free to decide whether they want to wear burkas, the head-to-toe, face-covering garment they were required by the Taliban to wear.

Even before the Taliban came to power, some Afghan men insisted that the women in their families wear the garment.

“It’s up to the ladies,” Karzai said. “We can’t deny people their right to choose. We are basically a Muslim people, and we have our basic principles, but we also believe people have the right to choose.”