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Rice pledges support for Pak, Afghan democracy

Visit marred by deadly bomb blast, 5 killed

Reuters, AFP, Kabul/ Islamabad
A bomb blast in southern Afghanistan killed at least five people yesterday as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a one-day trip, pledging long-term US commitment to support Afghanistan's transition to democracy and move forelection in Pakistan.
Rice spoke proudly of the progress Afghanistan had made since US forces helped the Afghan opposition oust the Taliban militia in late 2001, after its leaders refused to surrender Osama bin Laden following the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
Earlier Rice told Pakistan's military ruler President Pervez Musharraf Wednesday night that the United States supports Pakistan's move toward free elections.
"We have a long-term commit-
ment to this country," Rice told a joint news conference with President Hamid Karzai, before flying back to Islamabad for further talks with Pakistani leaders.
"The Secretary expressed our firm support for steady movement along a path to free and fair elections in 2007," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said after Rice met for three hours with Musharraf, who seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999.
Rice had earlier met Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz after arriving from the Indian capital New Delhi on her first trip to the continent since taking up her post in January.
Pakistan has been a staunch ally of US President George W. Bush since the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington which killed about 3,000 people and for which al-Qaeda claimed responsibility.
"She expressed our appreciation for Pakistan's superb support in the waron terror," Boucher said.
Rice, who was to fly to the Afghan capital Kabul early Thursday, also discussed with Musharraf "how both our nations can support Afghanistan as it moves to parliamentary elections in the months to come," Boucher said.
After a brief stop in Kabul, Rice is to return later the same day to Pakistan for talks with other senior Pakistani figures including her counterpart Khurshid Kasuri.
A Taliban-inspired insurgency in the country has faded over the past few months.
Thursday's blast killed five people in the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, 460 km southwest of the capital. It was the worst bomb attack since August.
More than 30 people were
wounded. A senior security officer blamed Taliban loyalists for the attack, but a Taliban spokesman denied responsibility.
Rice, on her first visit to Kabul, said the United States would stick by the Afghan government as it sought to bring peace and stability after decades of violence going back to the Soviet invasion in 1979.
"We learned the hard way what it meant not to have a long-term commitment," she said, referring to how Washington abandoned Afghanistan once Soviet troops withdrew in 1989 leaving al-Qaeda to establish bases there.
The US administration sees Afghanistan as a foreign policy success. After throwing out the Taliban, it set the country on the path to its first democratic presidential election in 2004, which Karzai easily won.