RIYADH/KABUL/WASHINGTON, 24 December — Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, yesterday sent cables to Afghanistan’s interim leader Hamid Karzai congratulating him on the new government in Kabul.
"On the occasion of your assumption of the post of interim leader of sisterly Afghanistan, we would like to send our best wishes and blessings," King Fahd said in the cable. "We would like to affirm the importance of the territorial integrity and unity of the people of Afghanistan, the implementation of the Bonn conference agreement and the relevant UN Security Council resolution," the king added. Crown Prince Abdullah sent a similar cable.
But a day after inauguration, Karzai faced problems over the US bombing of a convoy of tribal elders that killed 65 people on Friday. A tribal leader said he would wage a war against the new administration if such incidents recurred. "The bombing was so intense that only the lucky ones could escape," Haji Yaqub Khan Tanaiwal, 65, a Mujahedeen commander said from his bed in Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar, capital of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province.
Local Pashtun tribal chieftain Gulabdin said Karzai would face an armed uprising if there were more US attacks on Khost, the Afghan Islamic Press said.
US officials insisted the convoy had opened fire on US aircraft just before it was bombed and had been carrying Al-Qaeda leaders. Karzai said he was in discussions with the Americans about the incident, but he was clearly irritated at the distraction from the work of his new 29-member Cabinet and power-sharing government that held its first meeting. All members of the government — including two women — were present at the two-and-a-half hour meeting in the Gul Khana presidential palace.
A spokesman for the Kandahar governor said the US Federal Bureau of Investigation is questioning ex-Taleban Deputy Defense Minister Mullah Muhammad Fazil as it seeks Taleban head Mullah Muhammad Omar. An eight-man FBI team was interrogating Fazil in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan.
Fazil was arrested by the forces of ethnic Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum a month ago at the time of the Taleban’s surrender in the north.
Meanwhile, the Kingdom’s Department for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has denied US media claims that it has links with Al-Qaeda. Acting chief Sheikh Ibrahim ibn Abdullah Al-Ghaith told Okaz daily the department is not linked in any way with any external organization and has not helped anyone enter Afghanistan. US television networks reported Thursday that the Pentagon had deliberately omitted sections of a videotape showing Bin Laden rejoicing over the Sept. 11 attacks. At the start of the tape, a man identified as Khalid Al-Harbi speaking with Bin Laden "seems to claim he was smuggled into Afghanistan by a member of Saudi Arabia’s religious police," according to ABC’s translation. "These claims are absolutely incorrect. We don’t know this man, we have never seen him and his name is not familiar to us," Ghaith said. "The department has no external links with any organization or country. It is a government department and its efforts are concentrated inside Saudi Arabia," he said.
