Karzai promises Afghan voters a brighter future

President Hamid Karzai held his first campaign rally outside of the capital in a small village yesterday, promising a welcoming crowd a brighter future if elected this month.

The leading contender in the August 20 elections addressed the boisterous rally of several thousand people alongside the spiritual leader of the Ismaili Shia sect that dominates this area, who told his followers to choose Karzai.

Villagers held up placards of the president and shouted slogans such as "Karzai will succeed" at the gathering near a village six hours' drive from Kabul, at the end of a rocky road in the relatively stable northern province of Baghlan.

The leader of Afghanistan since the extremist Taliban regime was ousted in late 2001 is campaigning to win a second term in office.

In this first official rally outside of Kabul, he outlined his three-pronged platform of peace, development and solid ties with the foreign powers propping up the war-ruined country.

"Terrorism is still bothering us, is still destroying the country... for us the first thing is peace and national unity," he said, referring to a Taliban-led insurgency that has this year become its deadliest.

He said his second priority was to improve Afghanistan's relations with the international community.

"The third is development. We have built the roads and schools, the next thing is agriculture. We have to make dams to bring the water to the land and our electricity should be our own," he said.

Construction of one of the least developed countries in the world has been hampered by the insurgency which has brought more than 100,000 international troops to Afghanistan. Nevertheless, gains have been made.

Karzai said that since the fall of the Taliban, whose five-year rule followed a devastating and ethnically charged civil war, the country had come together.

"The big achievement for us in the last seven years is Afghanistan. After 30 years of war and misfortune, we have become a real house, a place of Afghan people," he told the rally.

"We have a better future, a developed future," he said. "Every house has to have a new vehicle and your children educated so you are satisfied and comfortable."

Men, women and children - all Ismailis - started arriving in Kayan on Friday, crowding into a field wearing badges and flimsy baseball caps emblazoned with Karzai's face.

Colourful posters of the waving president plastered the mud walls of adobe houses, and Afghan flags flew along the roadways.