Karzai off to US to commemorate September 11

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, en route to the United States for ceremonies commemorating last year’s September 11 attacks, today pledged to stay the course in fighting terrorism.

Al Qaida fighters and Afghanistan’s former Taliban rulers who gave them shelter “are defeated as a movement, but continue to act as individuals”, Karzai said during a stopover in Frankfurt for talks with German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. “Of course they will try some desperate acts.

“We will continue to fight against terrorism,” Karzai said before he and Fischer met at a US air base adjacent to Frankfurt international airport.

Karzai is to meet President George Bush and address the UN General Assembly during his five-day visit to New York.

“The purpose of the trip is to express his condolences to the American people. He will visit the World Trade Centre site,” presidential spokesman Sayed Fazel Akbar said in Kabul, the Afghan capital. Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah is to join Karzai in New York tomorrow, Akbar said.

The trip to the United States comes three days after Karzai survived an assassination attempt in the southern city of Kandahar. Karzai’s US bodyguards killed the gunman, an Afghan security guard and an Afghan teenager who deflected the gunman’s aim.

Karzai leaves behind a tense capital, where security was stepped up following a car bombing in Kabul Thursday, just hours before the attempt on Karzai’s life.

At least 30 were killed and more than 160 injured in the explosion, in the worst violence in the capital since the Taliban fell.

Authorities said they had been bracing for possible terrorist violence ahead of September 11 and in advance of the September 9, 2001, assassination of Ahmed Shah Massood, the commander of the northern alliance, by suicide bombers posing as cameramen.