KABUL, Afghanistan — Tainted by a flawed election and allegations of high-level corruption in his regime, President Hamid Karzai was inaugurated Thursday for a second term, saying the Afghan Army should assume full control of the country’s security within five years.
“The role of the international troops will be gradually reduced,” Mr. Karzai said at a midday ceremony held at the presidential palace in Kabul. “We are determined that in the next five years, the Afghan forces are capable of taking the lead in insuring security and stability across the country.”
To restore security and reintegrate insurgents who wish to support the government, he said he would hold a traditional loya jirga, a tribal council, to invite “dissatisfied compatriots who are not directly linked to international terrorism to return to their homeland.”
In a somber counterpoint to the ceremony in Kabul, two suicide bombers struck Thursday in the southern provinces where the fighting has been fierce. In Zabul Province, a car bomber struck a NATO convoy, and news reports said two American soldiers were killed. Since the beginning of the Afghan war in 2001, more than 920 American soldiers have died out of a total of 1,520 allied troops killed fighting the Taliban.
In Oruzgan Province a man wearing a suicide vest detonated his explosives at a market, killing 10 people, including 2 children.
Mr. Karzai spoke in Dari and Pashto, reaching out to the two largest ethnic groups, and also touched on the major points that the Americans and other Western countries have pressed him to address.
The audience of about 800 people — overwhelmingly male — comprised government officials, military officers, tribal leaders and foreign dignitaries.
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