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Afghan Leader Calls Opium, Warlords Enemies of the State

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From Associated Press

Hamid Karzai pledged Thursday to use his five-year term as Afghanistan’s first elected president to crack down on warlords and drugs.

Karzai also offered an olive branch to the Taliban insurgents, even as an offshoot of the former ruling militia threatened to kill three kidnapped United Nations workers who helped to organize the vote.

“The Afghan people have placed their trust in us, for which we are very grateful,” Karzai said on the grounds of his bomb-damaged Kabul palace, flanked by two smiling running mates and encircled by bodyguards. “They voted for a government based on laws and institutions, and that is what we are going to provide.”

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Karzai has said that smashing Afghanistan’s opium and heroin traffickers will be his top priority and the key to reining in warlords resisting the feeble authority of the central government.

He also has pledged to clear his Cabinet of faction leaders who helped the United States oust the Taliban three years ago but have proved ineffective in office.

But he renewed an offer to Taliban followers -- with the exception of a few dozen most-wanted fugitives -- “to come and participate in the rebuilding of this country.”

Election officials Wednesday declared Karzai the winner of the Oct. 9 vote after more than three weeks of laborious counting and arguments about whether he had cheated.

Younis Qanooni, who finished second with 16% of the vote, contrasted with Karzai’s 55%, accepted the result just hours before Karzai gave his televised acceptance speech.

“For me, Afghanistan’s national interests are the most important,” said Qanooni, Karzai’s former education minister. “If we didn’t accept the result, the country would go toward a crisis.”

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Ethnic Hazara chieftain Mohammed Mohaqiq and Uzbek strongman Abdul Rashid Dostum followed suit.

Karzai denounced as “terrorist elements” an armed group who kidnapped three foreign election workers in Kabul a week ago.

Jaish al Muslimeen, a little-known militant band, said Thursday that talks on their demands had broken down and they would decide today whether to kill their hostages: Irish-British citizen Annetta Flanigan, Filipino Angelito Nayan and Shqipe Hebibi of Kosovo.

Karzai said authorities “hope with God’s help to succeed in freeing them safely.” But neither Afghan nor U.N. officials have confirmed contact with the kidnappers.

The group has demanded the withdrawal of British troops and U.N. personnel from Afghanistan, along with freedom for Taliban prisoners.

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