Afghan president Karzai sworn in to second 5-year term

http://timesofearth.com/Worldnews/?NT=0&nid=13792 Kabul, Afghanistan - Hamid Karzai has been sworn in as Afghanistan's president for a second five-year term.
Karzai took the oath of office at the presidential palace in central Kabul on Thursday, in front of 800 guests, including 300 foreign dignitaries.

The guests included Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, and representatives from more than 40 other countries.

Kabul, the Afghan capital, was locked down ahead of the inauguration.

Regular flights to and from Kabul airport were cancelled for the day and a number of neighbourhoods in the capital were closed to traffic in an attempt to stop attacks.

Karzai is battling to rebuild his tarnished reputation following Afghanistan's fraud-tainted election on August 20, in which a UN-backed investigation found a third of his votes were fake.

He was named president after Abdullah Abdullah, his main rival, pulled out of a scheduled runoff vote.

In a speech following his inauguration, Karzai appeared to invite Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani, another election challenger and a former World Bank executive, into a government of national unity.

"I want to invite both of them to contribute," he said.

Karzai, who has faced criticism that he has not done enough to fight corruption, also vowed Afghanistan's "culture of impunity" would come to an end and that corrupt officials should be "tried and prosecuted".

"He still raised the detention of Afghan prisoners in American jails ... he raised other uncomfortable issues for the Americans, the issue of civilian casualties for example," Bays said.

"So he was able to make his speech, but it included that central element of corruption that the Americans insisted that they had to hear."

Karzai also addressed his country's security concerns, saying that Afghanistan's own forces aimed to assume responsibility for security in unstable parts of the country within three years.

He also promised to create thousands of jobs for his impoverished people as part of a reconstruction drive in the country.


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