Rice Meets With Karzai in Kabul

Two bombs exploded Thursday in the southeastern city of Kandahar, killing five people and breaking a lull in significant attacks as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made her first visit to Afghanistan and praised the country’s steps toward stability.

“The progress that Afghanistan has made is there for everyone to see,” Rice said during a joint news conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Hours before Rice spoke at the presidential palace in Kabul, a roadside bomb in a crowded market area killed five people and injured 32 in Kandahar, a former Taliban stronghold. There were no casualties reported from a simultaneous explosion on the city’s edge. Police blamed Taliban militants.

The dead included two women and a child who were passengers in a taxi. At least two other bombs were discovered in Khowst and Zabol provinces before they could explode, the Interior Ministry said.

Karzai, who has been trying for months to persuade moderate Taliban leaders to become part of the political process, said that despite the latest attacks, violence was declining.

He said there was a clear trend toward better security as his government built institutions such as a police force, an intelligence agency and a national army.

“Afghanistan is right now, very fortunately, among the less violent states in this part of the world,” Karzai said. “Violence, in comparison to what Afghanistan has gone through [and] in comparison to the fight we put up against terrorism, is much, much less.”

Rice’s visit was part of a six-nation Asian tour. She returned to Pakistan on Thursday, after talks there Wednesday, to meet with Foreign Minister Mian Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri.

Rice called on Pakistan to continue making democratic reforms leading to elections in 2007 but did not comment directly on whether President Pervez Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 coup, should give up control of the armed forces.

She praised Musharraf for his participation in the Bush administration’s war on terrorism and for helping stabilize Afghanistan. Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding somewhere along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

In Kabul, Rice praised Karzai’s efforts to cut Afghanistan’s opium production, which set a record last year. Opium paste is processed into heroin, and most of the world’s heroin now comes from Afghanistan, the State Department said this month.

Karzai said farmers were planting opium poppies out of desperation.

“This year we will have much less [opium] crops than last year,” he said. “Of course, it’s an economic matter. Afghanistan and the international community have to join hands in order to provide the Afghan people with alternative livelihoods.”

Afghanistan’s drug problem won’t be solved this year or next, Karzai said, “but we have begun a journey [on] a very positive note. And we will see in a few years’ time that Afghanistan will be free of drugs. It’s a long-term fight, and it requires a long-term strategy.”

Rice said she believed Karzai’s government had made a strong commitment to end “this scourge against the Afghan people and against the international community,” and she expressed optimism that the effort would succeed.

Last week, the House Appropriations Committee rejected a White House request for $570 million to fund Afghan reconstruction, which includes aid for counter-narcotics. The money is part of about $81 billion in additional funding the administration says it needs for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Rice said the administration would work to persuade Congress to fund the full request as the budget process continued. She reaffirmed Washington’s promise to maintain support for Afghanistan as the nation tried to build a stable democracy.

Rice also confirmed that Afghanistan had postponed parliamentary elections until September. United Nations officials signaled the delay last month, after Afghan officials missed a registration deadline for the vote to be held in May.

Election organizers need more time to solve technical problems, which include drawing electoral boundaries, agreeing on an electoral system and compiling a census, Karzai said.

The October presidential election was largely peaceful despite threats from the Taliban and its allies. But warlords, insurgents and criminals remain strong in large parts of Afghanistan, adding to the difficulty of holding a parliamentary vote.

The presidential election, after more than two decades of war and turmoil in the nation, “has indeed been an inspiration to the world,” Rice said. “I’ve talked to ordinary Americans who know the Afghan story. They know how the Afghan people sacrificed and how they struggled. And they know now that they are committed to democracy.”

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Associated Press was used in compiling this report.