Saudi Arabia has assured interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai it will return three Afghan officials named as suspects in Thursday's killing of the Afghan minister for air transport and tourism, a U.S. official said. Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. President George W. Bush's special envoy for Afghanistan, told the "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" he spoke earlier on Friday with Karzai, who described the killing of Abdul Rahman as "a conspiracy involving some security officials from the (Afghan) intelligence agency and the defense department."

Abdul Rahman was pulled off an airliner at Kabul airport on Thursday and beaten to death, highlighting the problems facing the interim government grappling to reconcile rival ethnic groups and rebuild a volatile and wounded state.
Three Afghan officials, including the head of political affairs of the intelligence agency, Gen. Abdullah Jan Tawhidi, flew to Saudi Arabia on Thursday aboard a flight taking Afghan pilgrims to perform the annual haj pilgrimage to Mecca, Khalilzad said. Bureau Report