KABUL (AFP) — President Hamid Karzai opened the third working year of Afghanistan's post-Taliban parliament saying terrorism was the nation's biggest challenge and must be fought inside and outside the country.
Karzai also paid tribute to eight parliamentarians killed in violence last year, the bloodiest of an insurgency led by the hardline Islamist Tailban who were ousted from government in 2001.
Six of them were killed in Afghanistan's worst suicide bombing, a blast in November that killed nearly 80 people, two-thirds of them school pupils.
"Terrorism is still our main challenge," Karzai told more than 300 members of the upper and lower houses of parliament, the cabinet and other dignitaries gathered for the first session of the year.
He again called for extremism to be fought at its "original sources," a likely reference to neighbouring Pakistan where Afghan and Western officials say Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked rebels have bases.
"Without a broad-based strategy, the fight on terrorism can't be successful and meet its goals," Karzai said.
"Targeting its original sources, drying up its finance sources and stopping the expansion of extremism must be included as the key points in the fight on terrorism."
The president also repeated calls for the tens of thousands of NATO and US-led troops helping his government to coordinate their efforts with Afghan security forces so "the fight on terrorism would be achieved quicker."
This would also help to avoid "mistakes" such as civilian casualties, he said.
Another main challenge was opium production, the president also told the legislators -- who include men accused of atrocities in the country's decades of war and former Taliban officials.
Afghanistan is the world's top opium producer, accounting for more than 90 percent of the global supply of the drug that is the raw ingredient of heroin.
Officials say the Taliban's campaign is funded in part by profits from the drugs trade, which supplies Central Asia and Europe.
"Drugs cultivation, production and smuggling, the existence of international drugs mafia and the terrorism leaders' and drugs mafia connection are another major challenge of our country," he said.
An alliance of Afghan opposition groups and US-led forces overthrew the 1996-2001 Taliban regime when it did not surrender Al-Qaeda leaders after the 9/11 attacks on the United States.
The country was set on an internationally supported path to democracy that included the first full parliamentary elections in September 2005.
The house is due to sit for five years but Karzai has been pushing for an election in 2009, at the same time as the next presidential vote.
The president and his government clashed with parliament on several occasions last year.
One of the biggest disputes was over Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta whom parliament demanded should be sacked over the forced repatriation of hundreds of Afghans from Iran. Karzai refused.
The parliament was meanwhile internationally criticised for expelling for the rest of its term an outspoken female parliamentarian, Malalai Joya, after she compared parliament to a barn.
Her comments referred to "warlords" who have seats despite allegations that they were involved in the 1990s civil war, when around 80,000 people were killed in the capital alone, and whom she has demanded should go on trial.
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