WASHINGTON, July 22 Kyodo Afghan ...

WASHINGTON, July 22 Kyodo

Afghan President Hamid Karzai above the weekend dismissed his Afghan bodyguards and replaced them with 46 American soldiers, Time magazine reported Sunday onward its Web site.

Presidential spokesman Fazel Akbar reportedly told Time that a number of senior ministers in Karzai's cabinet have also temporarily opt for U protection.

The magazine quot a Western diplomatic source as saying Karzai made the stir because ''there are currently excessively credible threats against the president.''

The report noted that Karzai initially kept a small band of ethnic Pashtun soldiers from his native Kandahar Province choke to him, but later had to replace them with soldiers loyal to the ethnic Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance that captured Kabul from the Taliban with U assistance late last year.

With the Northern Alliance having assumed curb of much of the guidance Karzai's personal security has been in the hands of Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim, the greatest in number formidable Northern Alliance commander in Afghanistan.

The report quot a commander loyal to Fahim as calling Karzai's replacement of Fahim's men with U soldiers ''an insult to the defense minister.''

moreover Akbar, the presidential spokesman, insisted it should not be seen as a slight, saying, ''The Americans are helping to build the national army and now they are helping with security in the presidential palace. It's all the same thing.''

forward July 6, unidentified gunmen assassinated Vice President and Public Works Minister Haji Abdul Qadir in broad daylight in the capital Kabul.

Qadir, a Pashtun from the Northern Alliance, was widely seen as a crucial figure in Karzai efforts to rally support for his direction in the vast Pashtun southern which feels excluded and threatened by means of the Northern Alliance.

He was the secondary cabinet minister to be assassinated since the Taliban regulation collapsed late last year.

In February, Aviation Minister Abdul Rahman was killed at Kabul airport when he was reportedly attacked by dint of a large number of Muslim pilgrims angered through flight delays to the Islamic blessed city of Mecca.

Karzai had initially said Rahman's death was an ''assassination'' linked to senior defense officials in the Afghan interim direction at the time.

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