Distraught president Karzai's peace plea from grave

PRESIDENT Hamid Karzai pushed past his bodyguard to climb into the freshly dug grave of his murdered half-brother yesterday and sobbed as thousands of mourners gathered for his funeral.

The grief-stricken Afghan president then appealed for an end to the violence which had claimed his sibling's life.

However, hours later five French soldiers and an Afghan civilian became the latest victims of the Taleban insurgency in the east of the country.

The assassination of Ahmed Wali Karzai, who was shot a point-blank range by a close confidant the day before, left Afghanistan's leader without a powerful ally in the southern province of Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taleban.

The radical Islamic movement claimed responsibility for the killing and Mr Karzai later urged them to end their insurgency.

He said: "My message for them (the Taleban] is that my countrymen, my brothers, should stop killing their own people. It is easy to kill and everyone can do it, but the real man is the one who can save people's lives."

His murdered half-brother was a reputed warlord, gangster and kingpin in a land overrun with men like him. However, he was the president's bulwark against the Taleban in the south of the country and enforced his tenuous rule over the Pashtun tribesmen who are the footsoldiers of the insurgency.

Wali Karzai also offered a way in for the international community, but his unscrupulousness also made him an embarrassment - a partner in the war against the Taleban whose associates included drug smugglers and dealers.

Early yesterday mourners flooded into the Karzai clan's home village of Karz in the south. Wali Karzai's body was in a wooden casket filled with red flowers. Then the president appeared at the edge of the crowd and pushed towards the lowered coffin. He paused at the edge of the grave, then climbed down into it, almost out of view. Onlookers heard him wail.

He remained in the grave for at least a minute, his outpouring of grief being heard above the cries and prayers of the throng.

Relatives and guards were unable to coax him out, but two men locked their arms underneath Mr Karzai's and pulled him forth. His guard then pushed a way through the crowd, as other mourners dropped handfuls of dust on his half-brother's coffin,

The assassin was from Wali Karzai's tribe and hometown and travelled with and worked beside him for seven years. Afghan officials said it was not clear whether he was killed by the Taleban, or died as the result of a personal dispute.

In yesterday's Taleban strike in Kapisa province, an attacker detonated a bomb near a meeting of local leaders guarded by French troops.spare page