Resurgent insurgent Afghanistan

Karzai speaks:

KANDAHAR - Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai, has attacked Britain, the United States and other nations with troops in Afghanistan, calling on them to "reassess the manner in which the war on terror is conducted", as the death toll in Afghanistan passed 600 in four weeks.

The Afghan President, who has seen support for his Government collapse in the violent and economically stagnant south of the country, distanced himself from the ongoing military operations there, which involve 11,000 troops.

"It is not acceptable for us that in all this fighting, Afghans are dying," he told reporters at his first press conference for at least six months. "In the last three to four weeks, 500 to 600 Afghans were killed. [Even] if they are Taleban, they are sons of this land."...

The Taleban now have three different press spokesmen covering three separate regions of the country.

In Kandahar this northern summer, Taleban cassettes, DVDs and magazines are available in numbers never previously seen. Their focus is the "puppet" Government of Karzai and its complicity in what is portrayed as the Western military persecution of ordinary Afghans.