KABUL: Afghan president Hamid Karzai has no plan to install former U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad as "chief executive" of his country, a spokesman said on Tuesday, denying a report in the New York Times.The U.S. newspaper, citing unidentified U.S. and Afghan officials, said Khalilzad, an Afghan-born U.S. citizen who served as former President George W. Bush's ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq and the United Nations, was discussing taking a powerful post under Karzai.Because of his influence, Khalilzad was known by many Afghans as Kabul's "Viceroy" when he served as Washington's top diplomat to Afghanistan.The newspaper described Khalilzad's proposed future role as "chief executive officer of Afghanistan". It quoted a senior U.S. official as saying the post would allow the American diplomat to serve as "a prime minister, except not prime minister because he wouldn't be responsible to a parliamentary system".A spokesman for Karzai said the report was false."We are not aware of this. We cannot confirm this. There is no truth in it," spokesman Siyamak Herawi said.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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