KABUL - Boosted by a promise of US$4,5 billion in aid, Afghanistan's fragile new government got down to business Tuesday but warned the money was needed quickly if the country was to avoid further chaos.

As interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai left Tokyo after an international donors' conference, his Kabul regime began paying civil servants who had not seen pay cheques in seven months and planning to receive returning refugees.

But Karzai warned that the cash promised by some 60 nations and 20 international organisations would have to arrive quickly, amid reports of looting and faction fighting in his war-battered homeland.

"We are happy with the result of the conference," Karzai told the Japan National Press Club. "I also hope the pledges are made true in the coming days so we can take on the process of reconstruction."

Earlier Karzai had warned that "without a full partnership with the international community, Afghanistan may falter again".
In Kabul the acting governor of the Central Bank, Abdul Fitrat, said: "We have begun distributing salaries on a limited basis today."

But officials cautioned that with only five months of Karzai's mandate left, the task of building stable Afghan institutions and accommodating returning refugees had barely got underway.

Deputy Public Works Minister Wali Mohammed Rasoli pointed to the reopening of Kabul international airport and the Salang tunnel, a key north-south road link, as evidence of early progress since the fall of the Taliban regime.

But both projects were largely carried out by UN organisations and foreign agencies, and Rasoli acknowledged that having inherited a bankrupt state the interim government had got off to a slow start.

The urgency of the rebuilding effort, reflected in the generosity of the Tokyo donors, was underlined Monday by reports of skirmishing between factions that were once allies against the Taliban in northern Afghanistan.

The Afghan defence ministry on Tuesday played down the clashes, insisting that they were a local dispute between commanders that had been quickly resolved by a more senior commander, Atta Mohammed, based in Mazar-i-Sharif.

Zabit Salih Mohammad Registani, of the ministry's foreign liaison department, said the skirmishes on Sunday in Sar-e-Pul province lasted only 20 minutes and "some people" had died but he did not know how many.

More pressure will be heaped on the shaky post-war settlement by the return of thousands, perhaps millions, of refugees who fled Afghanistan during 22 years marked successively by Soviet occupation, civil war and US air raids.

The UN refugee agency estimates that already this month 35 000 Afghans have returned from camps in Iran and Pakistan to a country were around 700 000 people are already reliant on food aid.

Some four million Afghans are living in the foreign camps, and many others are displaced inside the country.

"They will need land, houses, agricultural equipment and seeds so they can restart their lives," said deputy planning minister Salam Jan.

Karzai will have to oversee the rebuilding process even while laying the political foundations of Afghanistan's future, which will see a tribal council appoint a new administration in five months' time.

Karzai escaped unhurt from a multiple-vehicle collision Tuesday on Tokyo's high-speed Shuto expressway system, police said.

The accident was apparently caused by a Japanese police escort detailed to protect Karzai, as the leading car in his convoy braked suddenly.

Karzai's interim government took power last month after Afghan opposition factions struck a power-sharing deal at a UN-brokered conference, and US air raids cleared the way for the Taliban regime to be driven from Kabul.

Hundreds of US troops are still inside Afghanistan, searching for remnants of the Taliban and for Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network of Islamic radicals.

Tensions in south Asia were further heightened Tuesday when four unidentified gunmen attacked an American Centre in Calcutta, India, killing four policemen and injuring 20 other people - none of them Americans.

Indian Home Minister L.K. Advani condemned what he described as an attack by "armed terrorists" and said it had been claimed by a group with alleged links with Pakistan's Inter Service Intelligence agency.

Pakistan condemned the attack and said the Indian claim was "totally baseless".

Indian police described the attack as terrorism against US interests but no immediate link was made to al Qaeda or any other group.

Two reported anonymous calls to the media claimed responsibility for separate groups: the Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami - a Muslim militant group fighting Indian rule in Kashmir - and the Asif Raza Commandos, blamed for a spate of kidnappings in Calcutta including that of a prominent businessman last year. - Nampa-AFP