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Afghan warlord pledges to Dutch commander he will hand over armoury
 A warlord in northern Afghanistan whose village was devastated in the deadly explosion of a secret weapons dump earlier this month has agreed to turn over the rest of his massive armoury to Dutch forces, in what the Dutch defence minister on Thursday called a success for the UN disarmament programme. The explosion on May 2 killed at least 28 people, in the worst accident of its kind since the fall of the Taliban and the deployment of a NATO stabilisation force. It happened in the remote farming village of Bashgah, 125 kilometres north of the capital, Kabul. The ammunition dump held by Jalal Bashgah apparently was one of nine or 10 depots he had concealed from international forces trying to disarm Afghanistan's warlords and disband their militias to bolster the national army of President Hamid Karzai's government in Kabul. "We think this is a big success," said Defence Minister Henk Kamp on Dutch television. "We are trying to create a safe situation up there as soon as possible." Kamp said that after the explosion Bashgah had acknowledged, "this has to end now." Bashgah and his immediate family did not live in the house under which the weapons were stored. But the blast killed family members of two of his brothers, levelled six houses and damaged the village mosque. Posted by: Fred 2005-05-13 |
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