The Democratic candidate for president of
the United States, Barack Obama, arrived in Afghanistan Saturday on week-long
tour also expected to take him to Israel and Jordan and possibly Iraq before flying on to European capitals Berlin, London and Paris.
Obama, who wants to make Afghanistan a focus of US foreign policy in
terms of the "war on terror," was expected to meet US military
commanders and high-ranking Afghan officials.
His trip - details of which were kept strictly under wraps until his reported
arrival at Bagram US airbase north of Kabul - is seen as an attempt to improve
in the eyes of US voters Obama's perceived lack of foreign affairs knowledge.
CNN reported that Obama had already begun the trip on Thursday with a brief
stopover in Kuwait as part of a US Congress delegation, during which he had met
US troops.
Al-Jazeera broadcaster said Obama, once in Afghanistan, had been flown on from
Bagram to visit troops in eastern Afghanistan - an area which recently saw nine
US soldiers killed in a Taliban attack, one of the heaviest losses US forces
have suffered in Afghanistan.
Obama was also expected to meet President Hamid Karzai on Sunday as part of a
schedule which for security reasons was being kept a closely-guarded secret.
Meanwhile, the chief police of Kandahar told Deutsche Presse- Agenture (dpa)
Saturday that a roadside blast in southern Afghanistan killed four policemen
and wounded another.
Khan Mohammad - a police official in Kandahar province - said the blast struck
a patrol in Maiwand district of restive Kandahar province on Saturday.
In another development, two French aid workers were kidnapped at gunpoint on
Friday in central Afghanistan, officials said Saturday.
The two were abducted when a group of armed men entered into their
organization's guesthouse in Neli, capital of Daikundi Province, late Friday,
said Mohammad Nadir, the provincial police chief.
"The armed men tied up the guards and dragged the aid workers into their
vehicles," he said.
The two French nationals were employed at the Action Contre la Faim (ACF) (Action Against Hunger) organization providing aid relief to Afghan communities at
risk of acute malnutrition, the organization said in its website.
As a result of the kidnapping, ACF has suspended its current relief operations
in Afghanistan, which it said benefited more than 130,000 people in 2007.
The organization added that its primary concern at this point
was securing the release of the two kidnapped staff members, and ensuring the
ongoing safety of the rest of its team, dpa reported.