Bomber kills ex-Afghan president

Burhanuddin Rabbani, chairman of the Afghan High Peace Council, was one of several people killed by a bomber who apparently concealed a device under his turban.

His assassination will be regarded as a severe blow to efforts to resolve tribal tensions and the chances of beginning peace talks with Taliban insurgents.

Western leaders insisted the attack will not derail the political process but the serious blow to progress was underlined when current Afghan president Hamid Karzai cut short a visit to the US to return home.

Mr Karzai left the US after meeting President Barack Obama who said the killing of Mr Rabbani will not deter the US and Afghanistan from helping the country’s people live freely. He described the former president’s death as tragic.

Sources told reporters the man went to Mr Rabbani’s house in a heavily guarded enclave as peace talks were due to start.

The man, who is understood to have claimed to be a Taliban member, detonated his concealed bomb as Mr Rabbani stepped forwards to greet him, a police spokesman said.

Prime Minister David Cameron said work towards peace in Afghanistan would go on despite the assassination, which also cost the lives of four bodyguards and key presidential adviser Mohammad Massoom Stanekzai, secretary to the High Peace Council.

Mr Cameron said: “He was a respected former President of Afghanistan and played a vital role as the chairman of the Afghan High Peace Council.

“We met on my last trip to Afghanistan where I was able to hear and see for myself his determination to work for a better Afghanistan.

“He will be sorely missed but the work of the Peace Council will go on. We remain determined to see Afghanistan prosper.”

Pakistan’s prime minister and president both condemned the assassination.

A Pakistani government statement said Prime Minister Yusuf Reza Gilani and President Asif Ali Zardari conveyed their “extreme anger and shock” to the Afghan government.

Taliban factions based in north-west Pakistan, allegedly supported by elements of the Pakistani security forces, have been blamed by Afghan and US authorities for high-profile attacks in Afghanistan, especially in Kabul, over the past three years.

Ambassador Simon Gass, the Nato senior civilian representative in Afghanistan, said: “Rabbani was leading efforts towards peace in Afghanistan. He was a brave man, who did not hesitate to risk his own life in the search for a better future for all Afghans.”

Mr Rabbani’s assassination marked another dark chapter in a war that the US-led coalition is preparing to exit, with international troops set to leave Afghanistan by 2014.

For the past year, Mr Rabbani had been in charge of a government peace council that tried to facilitate contacts with Taliban insurgents.

But the council failed to make headway as warring sides and disparate groups manoeuvred for an edge in the long-running conflict.

Mr Rabbani, an ethnic Tajik, was president from 1992 to 1996, heading the Afghan government that preceded the Taliban rule.

After he was driven from Kabul in 1996, he became the nominal head of the Northern Alliance, mostly minority Tajiks and Uzbeks, who swept to power in Kabul after the Taliban’s fall.

Mr Rabbani had followed an up-and-down political career entwined with the wars that have torn Afghanistan for more decades, well before the US-led invasion that ousted the Taliban in 2001 because of their support for Osama bin Laden.

He spent nearly two decades in exile when he fled to neighbouring Pakistan after a bungled coup attempt against Mohammed Daoud, Afghanistan’s then leader, in 1973.

Ahmed Shah Massood, the northern alliance military commander who was assassinated two days before the September 11 terror attacks in the United States, joined Mr Rabbani in Pakistan.

After the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 and the collapse of Afghanistan’s Marxist government in 1992, Mr Rabbani and the other six rebel leaders agreed to form a government. But long-standing rivalries and animosities soon plunged the groups into conflict .