Kabul violence precedes Rice visit

KABUL, Afghanistan — Rockets exploded near the U.S. Embassy in the Afghan capital, Kabul, today, hours before a visit by U.S. Secretary for State Condoleezza Rice and a day after 19 police officers were killed in an ambush.

One rocket landed outside the residence of the Canadian ambassador behind a heavily fortified street not far from the presidential palace, the U.S. Embassy and headquarters for the NATO-led peacekeeping mission. One person was wounded.

The second rocket landed inside an intelligence-department office not far from the palace, police said. Rice, who is visiting other countries in the region, arrived today on an official visit for talks with President Hamid Karzai and other Afghan officials.

Rice also confirmed she would change her itinerary to visit neighboring Pakistan, where tens of thousands died in an earthquake Saturday.

In the attack late Monday on the police convoy, suspected Taliban rebels hiding behind rocks surrounded the vehicles as they slowed on a dirt road to cross the river in Helmand province and fired with machine guns and AK-47 assault rifles, Interior Ministry spokesman Yusuf Stanikzai said.

A provincial official said the rebels were believed to have fled across the nearby Pakistani border.

Also yesterday, a U.S. soldier was wounded by gunfire near Kandahar, a former Taliban stronghold, U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Jerry O'Hara said. Troops returned fire and the rebels fled.

In neighboring Zabul province, U.S.-led coalition and Afghan forces killed two Chechens and a Pakistani who were fighting alongside Taliban rebels, local government spokesman Ali Khail said.

Afghan officials have warned that foreign militants linked to the Taliban and al-Qaida have entered Afghanistan to fight.

Rice yesterday visited Kyrgyzstan, where she won fresh promises that U.S. forces can remain at a Central Asian air base that she called a front line in the war on terrorism.

The Manas air base near the Kyrgyz capital city, Bishkek, was Rice's first stop in the region. The base supplies fuel and other goods to U.S.-led troops fighting the 4-year-old war in Afghanistan. The U.S. pays $40 million to $50 million a year to use the facility.

Rice also encouraged further democratic progress for Kyrgyzstan's fledgling reformist government. A popular revolt the Bush administration calls the Tulip Revolution and largely clean elections brought President Kurmanbek Bakiyev to power in Kyrgyzstan this year and sent his predecessor into exile in Russia.

Rice, whose academic background was as a Soviet specialist, also tried out her Russian on an audience of politicians, academics and advisers gathered in a Soviet-era opera house for a discussion of an effort to revamp the Kyrgyz constitution.

Russian speakers said her grammar was rusty and her American accent prominent, but the effort brought appreciative smiles.