09 October 2004	Saturday	23 Shaban 1425

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KABUL, Oct 8: Rockets rained on cities and military outposts across Afghanistan as the war-weary nation prepared to go to the polls in Saturday's historic presidential elections.

The embassy district in the capital Kabul was among the targets as more than two dozen rockets were fired around the country in a 24-hour period, Major Scott Nelson, a spokesman for the US-led coalition told AFP.

Remnants of the Taliban regime and Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda group have vowed to disrupt the vote and hundreds of people have died in violence this year. The Kabul rocket, which was larger than the type normally used by insurgents, exploded above the headquarters of the US-led coalition without causing any injuries, interior ministry spokesman Lutfullah Mashal said.

A rocket strike wounded two children in eastern Jalalabad city while four more people were injured in firefights in south-eastern Afghanistan. Front-runner and US-backed interim President Hamid Karzai said he believed conditions were right for a "fairly free" election despite "terrorist attacks" and reports of intimidation by drug-funded warlords.

Officials have warned of car-bomb blasts in the cities and the possibility of armed assaults on polling stations. Police said they stopped a truck packed with explosives on Friday outside the main southern city of Kandahar. Three Pakistani nations were detained.

Two suspects with waistcoats of the type used by suicide bombers were arrested in Jalalabad, a defence ministry spokesman said. In Kabul, the interior ministry announced that trucks, provincial taxis, and carts would not be allowed into the city for several days over the election.

The streets of the capital were unusually quiet on Friday, and several Afghans said they were afraid. "We are worried about security and we see people looking worried. Maybe there will be some explosion tomorrow," said Zubair, 19. But voters in Kandahar, once the heartland of the Taliban, were enthusiastic about the election and saw it as a chance to turn their backs on war. A total of 100,000 international and local troops, police and security personnel will guard some 10.5 million registered voters as they go to the polls.

The US still has more than 18,000 troops in Afghanistan, backed by 9,000 NATO peacekeepers, and the men and women who leave their farms and villages for the 5,000 voting stations scattered through Afghanistan's wild landscape will be casting a vote with global resonance.

At stake is not only the presidency of this turbulent land, but the status of the US-led war on terrorism, which has sharply divided the world over the past three years.

A smooth election with an undisputed outcome - neither of which is guaranteed - will enable President George W. Bush to claim a victory for his much-maligned foreign policy and predict a similar outcome for Iraq where elections are slated for January.

On the eve of the vote the US State Department called it a "historic moment" and a fulfilment of US promises to re-establish a democratic state. "We are true to those promises," spokesman Richard Boucher he told reporters. -AFP