KABUL: Standing side by side with President Hamid Karzai in the balmy surrounds of the White House Rose Garden on Tuesday, President George W. Bush hailed Afghanistan as a model for the future of Iraq.

Afghanistan, Bush said, had risen "from the ashes of two decades of war and oppression". The stark realities on the ground are not so rosy amid resurgent Taliban violence that mean Afghanistan may not be able to hold September elections on schedule, thus dealing a blow to the image of success painted by Bush.

A growing number of analysts have said Bush should ease pressure on Afghanistan to hold elections ahead of his own bid for re-election in November. "Many Afghans believe that the only reason for the rush to the election is to provide Washington with an exit strategy," respected New York University academic Barnett Rubin wrote in an article published this week in the International Herald Tribune.

"After both the US and Afghan elections, they believe, Washington wants to declare victory in Afghanistan and focus all available resources on Iraq." While Bush did not intend to walk away from Afghanistan, Rubin said, "the low cost way in which the Bush administration has tried to pursue its policies in Afghanistan while focusing resources on Iraq has strengthened these suspicions".

The costs of that approach have been high in human terms. Recent months have seen an upsurge in violence blamed on Taliban guerrillas and their militant allies. More than 800 people have died in militant-linked violence since August.

While that is far fewer than the casualties in Iraq, the militants have managed to severely disrupt essential aid and reconstruction work and preparations for the elections.

Despite a 20,000-strong US-led force pursuing the militants and thousands more Nato-led peacekeepers, victims have included dozens of aid workers, government officials and foreigners from around the globe working on key reconstruction projects.

The violence has turned many parts of Afghanistan into no-go areas for aid workers and slowed efforts to register voters. A spokesman for the Nato-led peacekeepers said security was deteriorating as militants try to make good their bid to stop the elections.

ELECTION DOUBTS: Even as Karzai was being entertained by Bush in Washington, a rocket landed near the US embassy and the headquarters of Nato-led peacekeepers in Kabul, wounding an Afghan soldier, while suspected militants shot dead a government official and two bodyguards in the southern province of Kandahar.