Slain Afghan vice-president laid to rest

Security was intense in Kabul yesterday when a jittery Afghanistan buried one of its vice-presidents, Abdul Qadir, who was shot dead outside his office in the capital by unidentified assailants on Saturday.

Helicopters flew overhead and police with white helmets manned checkpoints on roads leading to the Eid Gha mosque. Marksmen watched from rooftops as the coffin, sprinkled with red and white roses, passed thousands of mourners who had gathered along the route of the cortege.

His body was later flown to the eastern city of Jalalabad, where Mr Qadir had great influence, to be buried with full military honours. Male mourners wept noisily as his coffin, draped in the Afghan flag of green, red and black, was lowered into a grave in the Amir Shaheed Gardens.

Apart from President Hamid Karzai, Mr Qadir was the most prominent ethnic Pashtun in the Afghan government, which is dominated by Tajiks. His assassination has sparked fears of fresh instability in a country struggling to build peace after decades of war, and threatens to stir unrest in the province of Nangarhar, which would complicate the government's efforts to extend its authority beyond the capital.

Mr Qadir, who was minister of public works and the governor of Nangarhar, died in a hail of bullets after two gunmen opened fire on his vehicle as he was leaving his office. His driver, who was his son-in-law, was also killed, and two passengers were wounded.

About 10,000 people including Afghan troops in full uniform followed his coffin, being transported on a gun carriage from Jalalabad's White Mosque, where prayers were said, to the honeysuckle-scented gardens. A poem in Pashtu, read over a loudspeaker as he was buried, hailed him as a unique man and a hero of Afghanistan. He was buried near his brother, the veteran anti-Soviet guerrilla Abdul Haq, who was executed by the Taliban in October.

Mr Qadir, one of five vice-presidents appointed last month in an effort to bring ethnic balance into the government, may have deserved those compliments. But he also made many enemies as a controversial figure in Afghan politics for nearly 25 years.

As governor of Nangarhar before the Taliban took power, he welcomed Osama bin Laden to Afghanistan in 1996. Later he joined the opposition Northern Alliance, which overran Kabul in November after the Taliban fled a US-led bombing and ground offensive. A powerful military and political figure with vast business interests in eastern Afghanistan, he was suspected of making money from the opium trade. Locals in Nangarhar speculated yesterday that the killing could have been perpetrated by drug lords.

Afghanistan's chief justice, Fazle Hadi Shinwari, said every effort was being made to find the killers. No group has claimed responsibility for the death. Samet Oz, a spokesman for the international peace-keeping force in Afghanistan, said it was "an individual attack designed to destabilise the transitional government".

Mourners said the killing was a setback for peace. Haji Saki, a former guerrilla fighter with Mr Qadir, said: "Whoever did this must pay."

¿ Two French soldiers helping to clear ordnance from Kabul airport were wounded by a land mine on Saturday, the International Security Assistance Force said yesterday. They have been flown to Paris.