14/11/2003

UN calls for calm after Afghan car bomb

The UN has called on the Afghan government to "provide more security" for its operations following a car explosion on Tuesday night outside UN offices in the southern city of Kandahar.

The Security Council in New York also condemned the attack, which injured a UN guard and a passing Afghan student. Three security guards provided by the Afghan Ministry of the Interior have been arrested in connection with the blast. The UN has set up an investigation into the incident.

"I do not believe that anybody who attacks the UN in Afghanistan is a friend of the people of Afghanistan," Secretary-General Kofi Annan's Special Representative, Lakhdar Brahimi, said in Kabul, the Afghan capital.

"The United Nations has been here for many years helping the Afghan people. We did not in the past, and do not now, have any agenda for or against anybody. Our only agenda has been and remains to help the people of Afghanistan establish peace and stability and reconstruction," he said.

There are around 11,000 soldiers from coalition forces deployed in Afghanistan to maintain stability.

Speaking yesterday, the commander of US troops in Iraq, General Abizaid, said that troops were working in "a very difficult operating environment, but one in which we have been militarily very successful."

He general said that combat operations go on daily in Afghanistan that are "every bit as much and every bit as difficult as those that go on in Iraq".

(gmcg)

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