AFGHANISTAN: Protests break out at former president's funeral

[n2doc]

REPORTING FROM KABUL, AFGHANISTAN -- Angry protests against President Hamid Karzai erupted Friday at the burial of the Afghan government's chief peace negotiator, who was killed this week by a suicide bomber posing as a Taliban envoy.

The daylong funeral observances for Burhanuddin Rabbani, a former president, brought Afghanistan's capital to a near standstill, with some of the heaviest security in recent memory. Afghan police and soldiers in armored vehicles patrolled the streets, checkpoints dotted major boulevards and traffic circles, and a large part of the city center was blocked to all but foot traffic. Helicopters buzzed overhead.

Rabbani was the head of Afghanistan's High Peace Council, which was set up by the government a year ago to try to open negotiations with the Taliban. He was killed Tuesday in his home in an affluent Kabul neighborhood by an assailant who claimed to be carrying a peace message from the Taliban leadership -- but instead had a bomb concealed in his turban.

Karzai and other senior Afghan officials have described the assassination plot as an elaborate ruse, months in the making. But some of Rabbani's prominent supporters turned their anger against Karzai, who had urged the 70-year-old politician to meet with the man who turned out to be his assassin.

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http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2011/09/afghanistan-protests-break-out-at-former-presidents-funeral.html