Such incidents against the 4.500 soldiers of the international force have dramatically increased in the past, they noted, adding that like other foreign organizations based in Afghanistan, the ISAF had also received some warnings. "Threat of an attempt by car bomb existed since months", a spokesman for the German forces, Colonel Thomas Loebboring told the French daily "Le Monde" on Sunday. "There are such threats every day and we take them very seriously", he pointed out.

ISAF soldiers patrol on foot or by car in all districts of Kabul and are relatively vulnerable. Saturday, it was a taxicab stuffed of explosives that exploded near a bus that was taking 33 Germans who had finished their stay in Afghanistan to the airport.

Since ISAF was deployed in Kabol on December 2001, this attack was the most devastating and though it has not been claimed by any organization, but the Afghan authorities blame it to the al-Qa’eda "terrorists".

In a telephone call to German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Afghan President Hamed Karzai vowed to do "everything he could" to prevent terrorist attacks and protect foreigners in his country, saying the perpetrator of Saturday's attack in the capital Kabul was "probably" not an Afghan.

"I tell you with a guarantee, that the person who did a suicide attack the day before yesterday, you will find out was not from Afghanistan."

In a press conference, Karzai blamed the recent wave of violence across the south of the country and in Kabul on Pakistan-based terrorists and remnants of the hard-line Islamic Taleban regime which fell from power in late 2001 after U.S. military intervention.

In fact, the remnants of the former Taleban, supporters of the former prime minister Golboddin Hematyar and supporters of al-Qa’eda have united in a single anti-government front, increasing pressures on both the ISAF and American forces, forcing the United Nations special representative on Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, to warn the Security Council that "the deterioration of the security is endangering the whole of Bonn process and even on the future of Afghanistan".

The latest attack on the international peace keeping forces was followed by a call from the ousted Taleban regime on the Afghan army and police to join the Islamic movement in its campaign against Karzai and the Americans.

Western diplomats are concerned that Taleban guerrillas and sympathisers are growing in number and confidence in the south and southeast of the country.

"Pamphlets have been distributed in the southern province of Zabol, part of the former heartland of the Taleban movement", Mohammad Omar, the deputy Governor of the Province told the British news agency "Reuters", who added that the pamphlets also warned that those who failed to follow the orders of the Taleban would be killed.

"For the past several days we have been seeing these leaflets here. They have called on the army and police force to join the Taleban to fight Karzai's government and coalition forces instead", he said.

One year and half after the installation of the Afghanistan’s UN-American-installed government under the powerless Karzai, the security situation continues to deteriorate. The lack of authority of the central government, its absence of meaningful results, the marginalisation of the Pashtoons, who are in majority in Afghanistan, in a cabinet that is dominated by the Tajiks of the former Northern Alliance, the perpetuation of the power of the warlords and the ever-growing number of poppies fields, are as many reasons that explain the phenomenon and that threaten the rebirth of Afghanistan.

In his report, Mr. Brahimi underlined the necessity to reform the security structures, almost all of them controlled by the Persian speaking Tajiks, in so forth that, he said, "all Afghans accept the institutions as being truly national".

The warning is addressed to both Defence Minister Mohammed Fahim, who shows little interest for creating of a national army whose loyalty would go to the Afghan state, as well as to some warlords like General Rashid Dostom, the Uzbek ruler of Mazar Sharif on the north and General Esma’il Khan, the powerful Emir of Heart, who is backed by neighbour and influential Iran.

The United Nations has urged the Afghan authorities to take urgent measures to make the army and the Defence Ministry more representative of the country's ethnic make-up and warned that failure to change the situation would undermine efforts to disarm the powerful militia groups which control much of provincial Afghanistan.

"The main logic behind Afghan’s tragedy is that no one, the Americans, the United Nations, the international community, is really helping Karzai, who is seen as an American puppet, and is destabilised by both Iran and Pakistan, but for conflicting reasons, to assert his authority beyond Kabol", explained one Afghan analyst in Paris.

"Karzai was promised the sun and the moon, international donors had pledged hundreds of billions in urgently needed funds for the reconstruction of the war-ruined nation, but he got few pennies with most of it going to… international agencies filled with foreign staff paid more than what they would have earned in their nations", he said, adding: "if this is not a shame, then what is?" ENDS AFQANESTAN VIOLENCE 9603