Cheney visits US military in Afghanistan

US vicepresident Dick Cheney landed at the largest US military base in Afghanistan this afternoon for consultations with American military leaders, but a planned meeting with President Hamid Karzai was cancelled because of inclement weather.

Cheney landed at the base at Bagram, about 30 miles north of Kabul, shortly after a meeting in neighbouring Pakistan.

There he told President General Pervez Musharraf that al-Qaida is regrouping in Pakistan’s remote border area and that Pakistan needs to do more to confront the problem.

The unannounced stops in Pakistan and Afghanistan have been shrouded in secrecy for security reasons, and Afghan and US officials refused to comment until after the Vice President left the country.

He is expected to be in Afghanistan for just a few hours.

Cheney had planned to travel from Bagram to Kabul, probably by military helicopter, but a steady snowfall in the capital made that trip unsafe, and it was cancelled, said Khaleeq Ahmad, a spokesman for Karzai.

The two leaders had been expected to talk about security along the Afghan-Pakistan border and an expected increase in violence by Taliban militants as spring thaws mountain snows.