Karzai visits Afghan police cadets in Turkey

SİVAS

President Karzai (R) visits police cadets with Turkish Minister Şahin.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai visited a police college where Afghan police cadets were trained in the eastern province of Sivas, Turkey.

Along with Turkey’s Interior Minister İdris Naim Şahin and Defense Minister İsmet Yılmaz, Karzai greeted the Afghan cadets in Turkish and met with the students after visiting the school, Anatolia news agency reported.

Speaking at the school, Karzai said the cadets would improve the relations of the two countries in the future and concluded his speech by saying “long live Turkey” in Turkish.

Suicide bombs kills 2
Meanwhile, a suicide bomber detonated a car packed with explosives near a NATO base in Kandahar in Afghanistan’s south yesterday, killing two people and wounding 16, including three foreign soldiers, police said. U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who arrived in Afghanistan on Dec. 12, was in Kandahar before the blast. Panetta met top commanders in Kabul to finalize options for President Barack Obama on how many troops to keep in Afghanistan after the NATO mission ends in 2014.

Panetta has not disclosed how large a force he believes will be needed, but one U.S. official has told Reuters that figures as low as 6,000 U.S. troops were under consideration. Obama could make a decision in the coming weeks.