Bomb kills 5 as Ahmadinejad, Gates visit Afghanistan
A car bomb killed five people in Afghanistan yesterday, as the Iranian president and the defence secretary of Iran's arch-foe, the United States, paid duelling visits to the war-torn country.
The attack killed Afghan security personnel at a security post in Paktika, the eastern province which has become a flashpoint for a Taliban insurgency now in its ninth year and which borders militant strongholds in Pakistan.
Militants fired eight rockets at the post after the bombing, and it was not immediately clear if the number of casualties would increase, provincial police chief Dawlat Khan Zadran told AFP.
Late Tuesday a suicide bomber targeted a Nato-Afghan border police compound in neighbouring Khost province, killing two foreign soldiers in an attack claimed by the Taliban.
Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's arrival in Kabul was confirmed by the Afghan government as Gates visited a training centre for Afghan soldiers on the outskirts of the capital.
Gates is on the second day of a visit to review a surge of US and Nato troops set to bring the number of foreign forces in Afghanistan to 150,000 by the summer in a last-ditch effort to end the increasingly costly conflict.
Ahmadinejad has repeatedly called for the withdrawal of US-led troops from Afghanistan, on Iran's eastern border, while US officials have long accused Iran of maintaining links to Islamist insurgents in the country.
Speaking to reporters at the Camp Blackhorse training centre, Gates said the United States wanted Afghanistan to have "good relations" with all its neighbours.
Despite their rivalry, Washington and Tehran are both sworn enemies of the extremist Sunni Muslim militia, which ruled in Kabul from 1996, before being overthrown in the 2001 US-led invasion.
Washington has made a number of efforts to involve all of Afghanistan's neighbours, including Iran, in restoring stability to the country.
But they have been complicated by the lack of diplomatic relations between Tehran and Washington, and the standoff over Iran's nuclear programme.
Karzai spokesman Siamak Hirawi said the Afghan and Iranian leaders would discuss bilateral ties and expanding economic relations, such as a railway line from Tajikistan through Afghanistan to Iran.
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