12 arrested over VP assassination
( 2002-07-08 16:46 ) (7 )

Afghan police have arrested 12 people in connection with the assassination of one of the country's vice presidents, but are no nearer to finding a motive for the attack, an interior ministry official said on Monday.

The 12 include 10 guards at the public works ministry where Vice President and Public Works Minister Haji Abdul Qadir was shot dead in broad daylight on Saturday after his first morning in his new job.

"So far we have not found any concrete evidence to show who was responsible," the official, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters.

"None of the 12 has confessed to anything."

The guards were held soon after the killing on the grounds that they had stood by and done nothing while 36 bullets were fired at Qadir's car just metres (yards) away.

President Hamid Karzai said on Sunday the shooting would be fully investigated and he would call on experts from abroad to help if needed.

Qadir, a former anti-Soviet Mujahideen leader in eastern Afghanistan, was given a state funeral in Kabul and buried in his power base of Jalalabad on Sunday.

The only thing that was clear in the investigation was that Qadir, like many Afghan warlords and leaders, could not have risen to power without making a lot of enemies - especially within the lucrative drugs trade between eastern Afghanistan

and Pakistan.

Qadir was one of the few Pashtuns in the Northern Alliance that swept the Taliban from power last year, backed by US airpower, prompting speculation also that this might have been a Taliban hit.

His younger brother, Mujahideen commander Abdul Haq, was executed by the Taliban shortly after the United States launched air strikes on Afghanistan last year.

The assassination illustrates the problems facing Karzai just days after forming his ostensibly broad-based cabinet in a bid to lead the country from the centre and eliminate warlordism.