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Karzai : We Will Not Tolerate Chaos In Afghanistan
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Karzai: More arrests made in the killing of Abdul Rahman |
KABUL,
Feb. 17 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai
has said that he will not allow the country to go back to the days of looting,
murder and gun-running.
In
a carefully worded statement, Karzai said that, if necessary, he would ask for a
change in the mandate of the international peacekeeping force in Kabul, BBC’s
online news service reported. In addition, those responsible for the murder of
Civil Aviation Minister Abdul Rahman on Thursday would be dealt with sternly and
according to the justice system, he said.
Karzai
insisted Sunday there was no political motive behind the alleged
"assassination" of Rahman, as he trumpeted his cabinet's unity in
pursuing security officials blamed for his death.
"It
didn't have any political motives behind it," Karzai told a press
conference in the Afghan capital of Kabul, echoing his earlier assertion that
senior security defense and intelligence officials had acted out of "a
personal vendetta".
Witnesses
have said Rahman was dragged from a plane at Kabul's airport late Thursday by a
mob of people dressed like hajj pilgrims, thrown to the tarmac and beaten to
death by hundreds of other pilgrims.
Karzai
has rejected their accounts, but still refused Sunday to elaborate on the
security officials' alleged motive, or explain how Rahman was actually killed. However,
Karzai revealed that the accusers of the security officials were Defense
Minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim and Interior Minister Yunus Qanooni, both members
of the same party of most of the alleged killers, and of which Rahman was once a
member, AFP reported.
He
said this proved his cabinet was united in tracking down the murderers.
"They were fully, fully united. Every member of the cabinet exactly acted
as an Afghan minister and not as a party minister," Karzai said. "The
people that the minister of defence and minister of interior announced were
people who were their friends of many years, so they brought those people
forward; it was a very committed act of patriotism."
The
three alleged killers are General Abdullah Jan Tawhidi, the intelligence
agency's political affairs chief; General Qalanderbeg, deputy technical officer
in the defense ministry; and a prosecutor from the justice ministry, Saranwal
Haleem. The three had escaped to Mecca in a crowd of pilgrims, Karzai claimed.
Fahim,
Qanooni and the three security officials they named are members of the
Jamiat-i-Islami faction of the Northern Alliance, which had been fighting the
Taliban since it seized Kabul in 1996.
Rahman
had been a member of the faction, headed by ethnic Tajik former president
Burhanuddin Rabbani, until he was booted out due to personal differences with
late military commander Ahmad Shah Masood. He then joined a group headed by
ousted king Mohammad Zahir Shah.
Karzai
said the assassination allegations were based on "clear-cut
eyewitness" accounts, "or we would not have taken such strong measures
in the absence of proof".
Karzai
also rejected suggestions that if the three security officials killed Rahman, as
he claimed, this would indicate political divisions in the interim
administration. "There is no political implications of that, the cabinet is
very much united and in an Afghan straight way, I'm glad for that," he
said.
Karzai
has said that four other people were arrested in Kabul Friday concerning
Rahman's murder, and on Sunday said more were being hunted.
Karzai
began talks later Sunday with Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Pakistan Ali Assyri,
which he expected to cover the extradition of the three security officials from
Mecca. "The three that were in Saudi Arabia are the senior people and they
will be brought here. The Saudi government has already been informed," he
said. The Saudi press agency reported that Assyri was accompanied by a
delegation of Saudi embassy officials when he landed in Kabul from Islamabad.
Karzai
vowed "stern" punishment for those found guilty. "There will not
be any lenient hand there. They've committed a murder, and let justice decide,
let the courts decide."
Karzai’s
statements followed an incident Saturday, in which British peacekeeping forces
were shot at for the first time in Afghanistan. Troops returned fire after an
unidentified gunman attacked an observation post. According to the CNN,
international security forces patrolling Kabul and an Afghan civilian offered
conflicting accounts Saturday over the outbreak of gunfire earlier in the day.
The
incident was the first shooting involving the international security forces near
Kabul since they arrived last December.
The
incidents come hours after British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw left Kabul,
following talks with Karzai on the possibility of extending the ISAF's UN
Security Council mandate.
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