Afghanistan's new interim leader, Hamid Karzai, has left for Rome to hold talks with exiled former king Mohammed Zahir Shah, a spokesman told AFP on Monday. Mr Karzai left around midnight for Rome. He should arrive there on Monday. He has gone to meet with the ex-king," spokesman Shaida Mohammad said.

Karzai, a Pashtun royalist from the country's south who will head the 30-member provisional cabinet that is to assume power on Saturday, left for Italy from Bagram airbase 50 kilometers north of Kabul.

He held talks on Sunday at the airfield with US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who during a lightening visit to Afghanistan became the most senior US official to visit the country in two decades.
Karzai will return to Kabul before Friday, his spokesman said.

Afghanistan's former monarch, who has lived in exile in Rome since 1973, sent the main delegation to the Bonn inter-Afghan talks earlier this month along with Northern Alliance representatives.

The alliance, a loosely composed group of different ethnic minorities, swept into Kabul on November 13 after the Taliban fled. It subsequently agreed to share some power with Afghanistan's majority Pashtun tribe in a United Nations-brokered deal thrashed out over nine days of talks. Under the Bonn accord, an interim administration led by Karzai but including alliance figures in the key defence, foreign and interior ministries, will rule for six months.

Then a special loya jirga -- a traditional council of tribal elders -- will appoint an administration that will govern for up to two years ahead of elections. Bureau Report