KABUL, June 5: The United States would welcome the prospect of Hamid Karzai cementing his position as leader of Afghanistan’s government at next week’s Loya Jirga, a US envoy said on Tuesday.

The Loya Jirga will select a new administration which will run Afghanistan for two years, replacing the current interim government led by Karzai.

“If he is elected we will deal with him with respect. We will honour him. We will assist him in ways that we have dealt with him before,” US envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad said at a news conference.

Khalilzad also said that the United States, which is deeply involved in Afghanistan’s political power-play, would respect any decision made at the Loya Jirga, which is to convene on June 10.

The United States did not have a “strategic interest” in individual candidates, he said.

“If the Afghans make another choice we will do the same. It is an Afghan decision,” he said at the heavily guarded US embassy here.

Karzai, 44, is widely expected to be elected by the 1,501-strong Loya Jirga.

Many analysts believe former king Mohammed Zahir Shah, a close ally of Karzai, could be elected head of state with nominal powers while Karzai takes up the prime minister’s role.

Karzai, an ethnic Pakhtoon royalist, has managed to garner the support of several politico-military factions of different ethnic backgrounds.

Observers say that the charismatic politician, who has close ties with the United States, is the candidate of the powerful Jamiat faction which holds the key defence, interior and foreign portfolios in the current administration.

The two main Shia factions of Hezb-i-Wahdat and Harakat-i-Islami, dominated by ethnic Hazaras from the country’s central highlands, have said they would back him in next week’s tribal assembly.

HEKMATYAR: Former Afghan prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has teamed up with the Taliban and the al-Qaeda terror network ahead of next week’s Loya Jirga grand assembly, an official spokesman said Wednesday.