Karzai flies out of Islamabad a day early

Senior ministers who accompanied Afghanistan's interim leader Hamid Karzai to Pakistan said yesterday that he flew back home to Kabul under pressure from a key minister.

Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah is said to have compelled Karzai to slash his expected overnight stay in Islamabad and fly back to Kabul, despite the inclement weather conditions.

"He was helpless. The foreign minister was bent upon returning to Kabul", a cabinet member of the interim Afghan government was quoted as whispering to another colleague.

A number of the ministers visiting Pakistan for the first time after taking oath of their offices on December 22, stayed back, with the majority of them travelling to Peshawar to meet families and relatives, sources said.

The arrival of the Afghan leaders was delayed by two hours due to bad weather and heavy snowfall in Kabul, which had turned the runway at the Khwaja Rawash Airport almost non-operational for the last couple of days.

The interim minister for Irrigation, Haji Mangal Hussain, said, "We took the risk in extremely bad weather and offered our prayers before leaving Kabul."

Haji Mangal Hussain plans a short stay in Pakistan to meet his relatives.

"Our meeting wit President Pervez Musharraf and other officials was extremely fruitful and we hope that relations between the two neighbouring Muslim countries would further improve in due course of time", the minister added.

Another minister indicated that there were sharp differences on Afghanistan's emerging relations with its eastern neighbour within the cabinet. "There are groups within the interim cabinet. Some of them are favour of Pakistan, but others have adopted a different course," said one of the ministers.

The minister, known for his lively jokes and style said, "we the B-52 Group are better off in the given circumstances", a reference to those ministers and leaders, who are considered close to the U.S. and sympathetic towards Islamabad.

He was also critical of the functioning of some of the ministers. "I think, the ministers are acting in a way as if they are on the way out. It seems the interim ministers take no interest in their job because of the reality that a new set up is in the offing", he said.

Hussain disclosed that Karzai would send a special Ariana plane to Pakistan to take President Pervez Musharraf to Kabul to visit Afghanistan on the invitation of the Afghan interim leader. "It will be up to President Pervez Musharraf to fix his schedule to visit Kabul," he said.

An Afghan source said that the ministers in Karzai's cabinet know little about each other. One of the visiting ministers was surprised when he was told that the minister for Interior, Younus Qanooni, was a Sharia Law graduate from Abu Hanifa School in Kabul.

"This shows their relationship with each other," the source said adding that ministers affiliated with Shoora-i-Nazaar were not happy with the warming of relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"Gen. Fahim and supporters of the late Ahmad Shah Masood believe that Pakistan was involved in the assassination of the former Afghan defence minister," the source said and added that it was obvious that Arab nationals were involved in the suicide attack, which killed Masood last September 9.