WASHINGTON/KABUL, 23 May 2005 — Afghan President Hamid Karzai yesterday rejected US criticisms of his antidrug efforts, called international help in the fight “half-hearted,” and demanded justice for prisoners abused by US troops. However, he said on the eve of a meeting with US President George W. Bush that the prisoner abuse detailed in a leaked US Army report should not reflect on the United States as a whole.

The New York Times reported yesterday that Karzai and other top Afghan officials have been unwilling to take certain steps that would curtail Afghanistan’s huge heroin trade, citing a May 13 cable from the US Embassy in Kabul. Karzai, in an interview on CNN’s “Late Edition,” said at least 30 percent of his country’s poppies have been eradicated and called on the international community to step up its own efforts instead of blaming the Afghans.

Karzai said on Saturday he said he was shocked by a US Army report on abuse of detainees in Afghanistan, and that his government wanted custody of all Afghan prisoners and control over US military operations. The abuse described in the report, including details of the deaths of two inmates at an Afghan detention center, happened in 2002 and emerged from a nearly 2,000-page file of US Army investigators, The New York Times reported on Friday.

The United Nations yesterday condemned new allegations of abuse and called for tough action to deal with the offenders. “Such abuses are utterly unacceptable and are an affront to everything the international community stands for in Afghanistan,” Jean Arnault, UN special representative in Afghanistan said in a strongly worded statement.

Meanwhile, Afghan authorities are in constant contact with the kidnappers of an Italian aid worker and she is fine, a government spokesman said. Clementina Cantoni, 32, a worker for the CARE International aid agency, was kidnapped on Monday by four gunmen who stopped her vehicle on a Kabul street and bundled her into a car. The spokesman declined to reveal details of her condition or efforts to free her.

A man the government said abducted the woman has spoken to media several times, giving a baffling series of accounts, demands and threats. He told Reuters on Friday he had killed Cantoni but later told others she was fine. “We are in constant contact with them,” Interior Ministry spokesman Lutfullah Mashal told a news conference.

Cantoni’s abduction has raised fresh fears among Kabul’s 2,000-strong foreign community of Iraq-style kidnappings by anti-government insurgents or criminals. Cantoni’s kidnappers are believed to be criminals. Mashal last week identified the leader of the gang as Temur Shah, the man who has spoken to media claiming to be holding the woman.