KABUL, June 13 (News Agencies) - Jubilant delegates to Afghanistan's Loya Jirga grand assembly hailed Thursday, June 13, Hamid Karzai's election as head of state as a great step forward for democracy in the embattled country.

"This is really a great day for us because we saw democracy being implemented before our eyes," said Hamid Sidiq, a spokesman for former king Mohammed Zahir Shah, Agence France-Persse (AFP) reported.

"We think that this is a very good omen for the country's problems.

"I cannot describe it as anything but amazing. I'm extremely happy."

The ex-king's granddaughter, Homaira Wali, said it was "wonderful" to see Afghans of all ethnic groups mixing peacefully.

"It has been a wonderful day and a wonderful event," she told AFP.

"This was really amazing to see Afghans from different ethnic groups sitting under the same ceiling and talking about such a big and history-making event without a scuffle and without pushing each other.

"This is the most important for me."

Several delegates welcomed Karzai's landslide victory as a manifestation of democracy and national unity.

"It's a very memorable day for me because this is the first time in my life that I have seen a new government chosen for my country in a fair and democratic fashion," said Haji Abdul Baqi from northern Mazar-i-Sharif province.

Another delegate, Enay Tuliah from Parwan province north of Kabul, said the vote was a new beginning for Afghanistan after 23 years of conflict.

"I have big feelings today," he told AFP.

"This is the start point for my country's advancement."

Karzai, who had been the country's interim leader since December following the ousting of the Taliban, won 1,295 of the 1,575 ballots cast by Loya Jirga delegates.

He will lead the country until the country's first full democratic elections in 2004.

Karzai, 44, has spent much of his life fighting what he characterizes as “foreign influences” in Afghanistan. He first rose to preeminence fighting the Soviet invasion in the early 1980s. As a member of the Mujahideen, he helped organize one of the largest Pashtun tribes, the Popolzai, headed by his father.

Karzai’s work, based in Pakistan, made him a staunch nationalist bent on forcing out neighboring nations that he felt were using Afghanistan for their own purposes.

“If the foreign intervention does not stop in Afghanistan from all around, terrorism will not end in Afghanistan,” he recently told a reporter for the Australian Broadcasting Company.

Following the Soviet pullout, Karzai returned and joined the rebel government of Northern Alliance leader Burhanuddin Rabbani in 1992. He served as the deputy foreign minister, but internal divisions and bickering crippled the new state.

When the Taliban first began to emerge in the early 1990s, Karzai supported them. A native of the region around Kandahar, he saw the Taliban as a force that could finally end the violence. But as the fundamentalist group gained power, Karzai became suspicious of the Taliban, saying it was also influenced by foreign groups.

In 1995, the Taliban approached Karzai, hoping to have the influential tribesman join their effort. They offered him the position of U.N. ambassador in a new Taliban government, but he refused, telling friends he felt the Pakistani intelligence service was in control of the group.

No longer welcome in Afghanistan after the Taliban solidified control in 1996, Karzai fled. In 1999, Karzai’s father was gunned down as he returned home from prayers in the Pakistani city of Quetta. Reports attributed the slaying to the Taliban.

After the bombing began, Karzai slipped back into Afghanistan to help organize anti-Taliban forces among the ethnic Pashtun tribes of the south.