Karzai Vows to End Rule of Gun in Afghanistan

28/05/2001| IslamWeb

ROME (Reuters) - Hamid Karzai, chosen to lead the new Afghanistan, said on Wednesday he felt the great weight of his task but vowed to end terrorism, ``warlordism'' and the rule of the gun in a country he wants to rebuild almost from scratch.
``I am very, very determined...Terrorism has made our people suffer unbelievably difficult times,'' he said in a late-night interview in Rome with Reuters Television.
Speaking at a hotel in the Italian capital soon after he had received the encouragement of Afghanistan's exiled former king, Karzai also said he would be happy with a foreign peacekeeping force of any size necessary to be beneficial to his country.
Shortly before, Karzai had received the blessing and the personal Koran of the ex-king, Mohammad Zahir Shah.
``That was a tremendous, good gesture and a very good blessing,'' Karzai said.
Karzai, who was expected to return to Kabul later on Wednesday, said he felt the enormous load of his responsibility but that the possibility of success was great because of the backing of the international community.
He said he was not daunted by the challenge of trying to unify Afghanistan, where many of the groups that ousted the hardline Taliban from power were bitter foes of the past.
Memories are still fresh of the ethnic conflict of the early 1990s, when street battles between rival warlords, Tajiks and Hazaras, Uzbeks and Pashtuns, reduced much of Kabul to rubble.
Karzai said he hoped there could be agreement on the size of an international peacekeeping force, adding that he would accept ``any number that makes the task feasible, the task beneficial.''
But he also stressed: ``There is total agreement by all concerned that Afghanistan must have a national army that should be totally under the control of the Ministry of Defense and a national police force under the total control of the Ministry of the Interior.''