Hazara Nation

President Hamid Karzai said yesterday that he will seek reelection next year, saying he has yet to finish the job he began four years ago as Afghanistan's first freely elected president after nearly 30 years of war.

In a candid admission of some of his failures after four years in office, Karzai said Afghanistan does not yet have a functioning government, corruption remains rampant, and the Afghan people "still suffer massively" in the fight against terrorism.

"So I have a job to do, a job to complete. In that sense, yes, I would like to run," a relaxed Karzai said during an interview in the grand presidential palace in the center of Afghanistan's heavily fortified capital.

Karzai reflected on his aspirations for Afghanistan, which is still struggling to recover from poverty and war seven years after the rigidly religious Taliban regime was driven from Kabul.

"I have begun a task to rebuild Afghanistan into a peaceful, prosperous country, into a democratic country, a country where the Afghan people will have a voice and their rights respected, a country that will be producing its own and living off its own means," Karzai said.

"I have achieved some of those objectives. I have not achieved some of the other objectives," he said. "Afghanistan is not at peace. The Afghan people still suffer massively in the war against terrorism and in the war for stability in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is not yet a well-off country, still a very poor country."

Karzai acknowledged that his country "does not have a properly functional government yet. It must get that."

Afghanistan has seen a sharp rise in violence this year.

Militants have unleashed powerful bomb attacks on an international hotel and the Indian Embassy, and 2008 is on pace to be the deadliest year for international troops since the Taliban's 2001 ouster.

Karzai himself was the target of an assassination attempt in April, when militants firing rockets and automatic rifles attacked an anniversary ceremony to mark the 1989 mujahedeen victory over the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

The president also warned that his fledgling government was being "very seriously" undermined by errant US and NATO bombs that kill civilians, as well as hunts for insurgents that take international forces into Afghan villages.

On Saturday, four civilians were killed when international troops blasted a house in southern Helmand province with rockets targeting and killing insurgents, a NATO statement said.

NATO blamed the unintended civilian deaths on insurgents mingling with the local population.

The episode was only one of dozens this year where international troops have killed Afghan civilians. More than 3,400 people - mostly militants - have died in insurgency-related violence this year, according to an Associated Press tally of figures from Western and Afghan officials.

Karzai said he wanted attacks on Afghan villages stopped. "We also want the weaponry in this war to be targeted at the terrorists properly," he said.

© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.