KABUL, April 24: US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was to visit Afghanistan on Sunday, an Afghan foreign ministry spokesman said.

“He will visit high-ranking officials including President (Hamid) Karzai, Foreign Minister (Abdullah) Abdullah, the finance minister and defence minister,” the spokesman said.

Washington had notified Kabul that Rumsfeld would pay a one-day visit, he said. Further details were not yet available.

Rumsfeld’s trip follows a flurry of visits by US officials anxious to reaffirm Washington’s commitment to Afghanistan even as its attention is focused on post-war Iraq.

Top US commander General Tommy Franks paid a flying one-day visit to Afghanistan on April 11, even whle overseeing the war in Iraq.

Presidential special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad has visited Kabul twice in the past fortnight, most recently on Saturday.

On his visit to US-led troops here, Franks said a number of lessons learned from the conflict in Afghanistan 18 months ago were being applied in Iraq.

Those lessons were about the use of precision bombing, Special Forces and humanitarian aid, he said. —AFP