Rice praises Afghan people: blast kills five

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice praised the Afghan people as an inspiration to the world for emerging from decades of turmoil and embarking on the road to democracy, as a bomb blast in the birthplace of the ousted Taleban regime killed five people. Rice, making her first visit to the war-shattered capital Kabul, said the United States had learned its lessons and would remain committed to Afghanistan to stop it becoming a haven for terrorists as it had under the hard-line Islamic movement.
"I want to say to the Afghan people that their story here of coming out of civil war and turmoil and difficulties, and going to vote to demonstrate their commitment to democratic enterprise, has indeed been an inspiration to people all over the world," Rice told a joint news conference with President Hamid Karzai.
Rice held talks with Karzai, who won the country's first presidential polls last October, on how the United States could help rebuild the country and tackle the booming narcotics trade and the continuing problem of terrorism.
"We learned the hard way what it meant to not have a long-term commitment when after the Soviet Union left I think it is well understood that we did not remain committed," she said.
"In many ways September 11 was a joint tragedy of the Afghan and the American people out of that period," she said.
Rice and Karzai said the Afghan electoral commission wanted to hold the country's first post-Taleban parliamentary elections in September, with the US official hailing it as "yet another example of the Afghan people's commitment to democracy".
Karzai condemned a double bomb blast which killed five people and injured 32 in southern Afghanistan hours after Rice's arrival, saying the attackers' efforts to derail the country's progress were "fruitless".
One bomb hidden inside a parcel in central Kandahar, some 450 kilometres (281 miles) from Kabul, tore through a taxi as a two-vehicle World Food Program convoy passed, killing two women, a child and two men.
A second bomb, which apparently targeted a pick-up truck belonging to an international development agency, detonated simultaneously on the outskirts of the city but caused no casualties.