Karzai slams deadly NATO airstrike (2nd Roundup)

Sep 7, 2009, 15:04 GMT

Paris - Last week's NATO airstrike in Afghanistan that killed scores of people was a gross error of judgment, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said in an interview published Monday in the French daily Le Figaro.

'What an error of judgment. More than 90 deaths for a simple lorry, which was moreover immobilized in a riverbed. Why didn't they send ground troops to recover the fuel tank?' Karzai said.

Depending on the source, between 50 to more than 120 people were killed in Friday's bombardment of two fuel lorries reportedly seized by the Taliban.

In addition to dozens of Taliban fighters, an unknown number of civilians were also killed.

In the interview, Karzai also accused Western journalists of trying to destabilize the Afghan government by printing reports of widespread fraud in last month's presidential elections.

'It is very disappointing how British and American media have not respected these elections,' he said. 'These journalists are trying to destabilize the future Afghan government. If this media manipulation is aimed at installing a puppet government, it will not work.'

Karzai loyalists set up at least 800 fictitious polling sites where hundreds of thousands of ballots were recorded in the president's name, the New York Times reported Monday, quoting Western diplomats.

Apart from the fake polling sites, his supporters also took over another 800 polling stations and stuffed boxes with tens of thousands of ballots favouring Karzai, according to the report.

'This was fraud en masse,' a Western diplomat was quoted as saying.

Most of the alleged fraud reportedly took place in the Pashtun- dominated areas of eastern and southern Afghanistan, including in Karzai's province of Kandahar, all areas with a low voter turnout.

In Kandahar for instance, more than 350,000 ballots were waiting to be counted. But only 25,000 people actually voted there, diplomats said.

In the Le Figaro interview, Karzai, who has a sizeable lead in the vote count, also accused the US government of using unfounded accusations of corruption against his family and allies to make him more manageable.

'The Americans attack Karzai in an underhanded fashion, because they would like him to be more docile,' he said. 'They are wrong. It is in no one's interest for the Afghan president to become an American puppet.'