Airstrike inflames Afghan tensions

KABUL — U.S. and Afghan authorities investigated Saturday whether a botched NATO airstrike was to blame for the death of Afghan soldiers and police during a search for two U.S. paratroopers in a Taliban-infested area of the country's west.

The probe into a possible friendly-fire incident further aggravates strained relations between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the international community, which holds his enfeebled government partly responsible for the country's rising instability.

After enduring a drumbeat of criticism from world leaders in recent days, the Afghan government struck back Saturday, saying it viewed a U.N. official's prescription for ridding the country of corruption and warlords as an infringement on its national sovereignty.

The airstrike occurred Friday during heavy fighting in Badghis province, a remote area that borders Turkmenistan. Two days earlier, two U.S. paratroopers from 4th Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, disappeared there while trying to recover airdropped supplies that had fallen into a river. Fighting erupted between members of a search team and Taliban insurgents, the U.S. military said.

Eight Afghans — four soldiers, three policemen and an interpreter — were killed. Seventeen Afghan troops, including soldiers and police, five U.S. soldiers and another Afghan interpreter were wounded, the U.S. military said.

Afghanistan's Defense Ministry said the deaths and injuries likely happened "during an air attack by NATO forces" on a joint U.S.-Afghan base.

U.S. officials would not confirm the account but said a joint investigation would determine whether any of the casualties were caused by NATO "close air support."

The top U.S. and NATO commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, has ordered commanders to use airpower sparingly to minimize civilian casualties, which threaten to undermine Afghan support for the war against the Taliban. However, commanders are free to call in airpower to defend themselves against Taliban attack.

Although the United Nations says most civilian deaths have been at the hands of militants, deaths of men, women and children in NATO airstrikes have raised tensions between Karzai's government and the U.S.-led coalition.

Since a presidential election marred by fraud returned Karzai to power, a variety of international figures, including President Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, have called on the Afghan leader to take concrete steps to clean up his government.

On Friday, Kai Eide, head of the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, lectured the Karzai government, saying, "We can't afford any longer a situation where warlords and power brokers play their own games.

"We have to have a political landscape here that draws the country in the same direction, which is in the direction of significant reform," Eide said.

Eide said members of Karzai's new government should be vetted not just for ties to insurgent groups but also for links to criminal or drug activity.

His remarks drew a sharp rebuke Saturday from the Afghan Foreign Ministry, which accused Eide and others of interfering in the makeup of the new Karzai government.

"Over the last few days some political and diplomatic circles and propaganda agencies of certain foreign countries have intervened in Afghanistan's internal affairs by issuing instructions concerning the composition of Afghan government organs and political policy of Afghanistan," the ministry said. "Such instructions have violated respect for Afghanistan's national sovereignty."

Karzai promised in his first speech after his victory that he would work to eliminate corruption but did not give any specific proposals.

During an interview, Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmad Zahir Faqiri called Eide's comments "unfair."

He said details about the anti-corruption measures would be made public along with Cabinet appointments in two or three weeks.

Elsewhere, the deputy governor of the southern province of Zabul, Ali Khail, said NATO forces raided an office of the Afghan Red Crescent in the city of Qalat Saturday, killing a security guard and arresting three local Red Crescent employees. NATO issued a statement saying coalition forces killed a militant and arrested a few other suspected militants.

Also in Zabul province, Afghan and U.S. troops killed 18 militants, said Gen. Sher Mohammad Zazai, regional corps commander for the Afghan army. There were no U.S. or Afghan casualties, he said.