KABUL, Dec 24: Afghanistan’s new government on Monday set to the task of rebuilding a war-ravaged nation, while jittery governments worldwide remained on high alert for new terror attacks over the Christmas holiday.
An apparent would-be suicide bomber arrested on a US airliner revived fears that the campaign in Afghanistan has not put an end to militants hoping to wreak havoc and death on the United States and other Western targets.
Ministers in the cabinet of new Afghan leader Hamid Karzai were to visit their offices and greet staff on Monday as they began the delicate job of reconstructing a country shattered by bloodshed, drought and hunger.
While the two-day-old UN-backed government settled into office in Kabul, US troops in other parts of the country kept up the hunt for suspected terror mastermind Osama bin Laden and fighters from his Al Qaeda network.
In an interview with CNN on Sunday, Mr Karzai underlined that security was a priority for Afghanistan and that the terrorists who gripped the nation under the former Taliban regime would be uprooted once and for all.
“We will see to it that terrorism is completely finished in Afghanistan in all its forms,” said Hamid Karzai, vowing Osama bin Laden and Taliban supreme leader Mulla Mohammed Omar, who sheltered him, would be brought to justice.
The two men “together committed murder and the destruction of the Afghan land and people,” Mr Karzai said.
Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, who has been sharply critical of the make-up of the government, warned on Monday that thousands of Taliban fighters remained on the loose.
He said he wanted the 50,000 fighters under his command eventually to be incorporated into a future national army.
“In northern Afghanistan they are crushed but in other parts of Afghanistan they have changed their shape,” Dostum said.
In the United States, investigators said a suspected suicide bomber on a trans-Atlantic flight had two explosive devices hidden in his shoes but was overpowered by passengers and crew before he could detonate them.
The man, identified by the FBI as Richard Reid, 28, was caught on Saturday by a flight attendant on American Airlines flight 63 from Paris to Miami.
French police sources said Reid, due in a Boston court on Monday at 9:30am (1430 GMT), also identified himself as Tariq Raja, born in 1973 in Sri Lanka, and as Abdel Rahim.—AFP