NEW YORK, July 23: US soldiers, including commndos, will move into the Afghan presidential palace and take over responsibility for the security of President Hamid Karzai, illustrating concern for his safety after the assassination of a vice president this month, said the New York Times.

In Washington, US Defence Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the newest mission for American soldiers in Afghanistan might last several months. “We certainly look at it as a relatively short-term matter,” Mr. Rumsfeld said at a news conference. “What that means, whether it’s weeks or months or several months, I don’t know.”

Rumsfeld declined to say whether the move followed a specific threat or a request from Mr Karzai. “The important reason why he decided to do this, and why we decided to be cooperative about it, is because we agree that it’s important that the Afghan people not have an interruption in their leadership, having just completed that process,” Rumsfeld said. “It’s a very straightforward issue.”

Karzai’s spokesman, Said Tayab Jawab, saw the move in the light of the assassination of a vice president in full daylight in Kabul on July 6.

“After the unfortunate incident of Haji Abdul Qadir’s assassination, we are reviewing all security measures for the president, and a number of US special forces will be helping Afghan Special Forces to ensure the security and safety of the president,” Jawad told the paper.

An official at Afghanistan’s ministry of defence said 45 American troops, including Special Forces, would take over the presidential security detail.

The 70 or so commandos will leave the presidential palace and return to their base, he said.

Jawad told the paper that the Afghan guards would remain working with the Americans, who would train them in security work for several months.

Peacekeepers of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul also announced this week the start of a one-month training programme for bodyguards for ministers.

Mr Karzai’s acceptance of an American security detail is a sign of the very real worries among foreign powers that, if something happens to him, the carefully built power-sharing agreement in the country would collapse, the New York Times said.

The situation was underlined by the United Nations special representative in Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, in a speech to the Security Council in New York on Friday.

“Whatever successes we may have witnessed so far in Afghanistan,” Brahimi said, “a single act or event can send fear down the spines of the most powerful people in Afghanistan, and has the potential seriously to destabilize the situation.”

Brahimi warned that further setbacks and crises were likely and urged the international community to respond with even “more determined cooperation” with the Afghan people and leaders who supported peace.