'Outside support needed' to quash Taliban attacks

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said any upcoming attacks from the Taliban would be dependent on outside support, and vowed they would be countered with “vigour and force.”

Karzai’s remarks came during to visit in Italy a day after US President George Bush said Nato allies need to supply more soldiers to Afghanistan, where Taliban fighters are gearing up for a new spring offensive.

An offensive by the Taliban “depends on the structure of support they have or do not have outside of Afghanistan,” Karzai said yesterday. “If there is (one), we’ll strike with immense vigour and force.”

Flush with money from heroin-producing poppy crops, Taliban fighters have proved much tougher than Nato expected when it deployed its first contingent of peacekeepers there in 2003. Karzai travelled to Rome from London, where he met British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Speaking during a joint news conference with Karzai, Italian Premier Romano Prodi said Italy would keep its troops in Afghanistan despite opposition from within his own government, but urged a political solution to the Afghan problem.