Afghan President Hamid Karzai urged the international community Tuesday to rethink its anti-terror strategy in the country, while separately urging the world not to turn away after key elections this week.
Speaking before Sunday's milestone parliamentary and council polls, which Taleban rebels have threatened to derail, Karzai told the BBC there should be a focus on the "sources of terrorism".
"We and the international community, the coalition, must sit down and reconsider and re-think whether the approach to the threat of terrorism that has (been) taken is the absolutely right one," the US-backed leader said.
Karzai defended the performance of the 20,000-strong US-led military coalition in war-ravaged Afghanistan but said the security situation would take time to improve.
"I believe we have to go to the source of it," said Karzai, who won a presidential election in late 2004. "I believe we have to go where terrorists are trained. I believe we have to go where they are being helped to that."
When asked if he meant neighbouring Pakistan - frequently accused by Afghanistan of failing to crack down on militants operating from its territory - Karzai added: "I am not suggesting any country.
"I am just telling you we should go and stop it where it arises."
More than 1,000 people have died in suspected Taleban-related violence in southern and eastern Afghanistan this year. The Taleban were ousted by US-led forces in late 2001.
On Monday Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf, meeting US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in New York, unveiled plans to build a fence along part of the border with Afghanistan to curb the movement of militants.
The violence continued on Tuesday when two US soldiers were wounded and their vehicle destroyed by a bomb in Kandahar, the southern Afghan city where the Taleban movement was born.
Karzai also complained that the billions of dollars in international aid his country had received could have been better spent.
On Sunday's elections for the lower house of parliament and provincial councils around the country, Karzai rejected criticism that too many local warlords were allowed to stand as candidates.
"We have the freedom to choose. If I consider somebody criminal, I will not vote for him or her," Karzai said in the interview, aired a day after Afghanistan barred a further 21 election candidates for links to armed groups.
Separately, Karzai called on foreign backers not to disengage after the polls but instead to increase aid to get the country back on its feet after 25 years of war. "Our wish and our request to the international community is that with the parliamentary elections, they do not immediately think that the mission in Afghanistan is over and Afghanistan can go ahead with its own resources and on its own," Karzai said.
Speaking to a gathering of more than 300 tribal elders, local dignitaries and Islamic clerics in the main western city of Herat, Karzai said Afghanistan's fragile institutions still needed shoring up.
"The international community should continue to give its assistance to us in reinforcing our national institutions, our national army, our national police and our judiciary," he said.
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