Kabul: Intense rocket barrage prevented a
plane carrying UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the
Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt from landing at the Kabul
airport and the aircraft was forced to be diverted to Bagram
air base.
The two dignitaries were arriving in the Afghan
capital to attend an International Conference on Afghanistan
and the attack was confirmed by the Swedish Foreign Minister
on his blog.
"... rockets hit the airport just when we were coming
in to land," read the blog posted at 05:30 hrs in the morning
(local time).
Officials later confirmed that the flight was diverted
to nearby Bagram base from where the two VVIPs were ferried by
a Black Hawk helicopter.
"... together we spent a few hours on the giant US
Bagram base just north until the situation would become
clearer and arranged transportation to Kabul. There were two
US Black Hawk, which then took us away," Bildt wrote.
He said, "the Taliban and others would try to disrupt
the important conference here was obviously to be reckoned
with... Our presence here is a demonstration of our support
for peace and stabilisation process in the country".
Ban was to inaugurate the biggest ever international
conference being held in the Afghan capital in which 70 world
leaders, including External Affairs Minister S M Krishna and
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, are attending.
The conference is aimed at discussing a major plan to
hand over the security and military affairs to the Afghan
government in all the 34 provinces by 2014.
PTI
