January 3, 2003	Friday	Shawwal 29, 1423

KABUL, Jan 2: US troops have arrested a former Afghan minister who heads an influential Pakhtoon tribe in eastern Paktia province, an Afghan military commander said on Thursday.

“I can confirm that former minister Haji Mohammad Naeem Kochi has been arrested by Americans,” commander Mateen Hasan Khail of Paktia’s 15th military detachment said. No further details were immediately available, Khail said.

The Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) reported Naeem Kochi was picked up by US forces on Wednesday on a highway running south of Kabul en route to a meeting with his Ahmedzai tribe. The news service said Paktia governor Raz Mohammad Dalili confirmed the arrest but gave no reason.

Naeem Kochi was a minister in the government of moderate Afghan leader Sibghatullah Mojaddedi, who took over as interim president after the fall of the communist government in 1992.

He leads the large Ahmedzai tribe which has considerable influence in Afghanistan’s ethnic Pakhtoon-dominated Paktia, Paktika, Khost, Logar and Nangarhar provinces, AIP said.

He did not accept any office in the five-year Taliban regime which was ousted in late 2001, but maintained good relations with the hardline militia, it said.

Kochi was in a convoy of tribal elders, suspected by the US of including Al Qaeda figures, that was struck by US bombers in December 2001 as they travelled to Kabul to greet Afghan leader Hamid Karzai. He was slightly wounded.—AFP