09-27-2006, 06:14 AM
<b>Taliban bombs Afghan official's compound </b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan - A Taliban suicide bomber killed 18 people outside a provincial governor's compound Tuesday, <b>including several Muslim pilgrims set to travel to Mecca </b>â another in a series of attacks directed at senior figures in President Hamid Karzai's U.S.-backed government.
The blast at the doorstep of Helmand Gov. Mohammed Daoud Safi's compound came on the same day a bombing against a    NATO patrol in the Kabul area killed an Italian soldier and a child, and two weeks after militants assassinated a governor in eastern    Afghanistan who had been a Karzai confidant.
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<b>Bush to test body language at Karzai-Musharraf summit </b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->WASHINGTON (AFP) -Â Â Â Â President George W. Bush will Wednesday sit round the White House dinner table with the presidents of Pakistan and Afghanistan, keen to size up tensions between two key "war on terror" allies.
Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf and Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai will join Bush amid suggestions that testy cross-border relations are hampering efforts to quell tribal violence and hunt down terrorist mastermind    Osama bin Laden.
<b>Bush said he would use the encounter to "to watch the body language of these two leaders to determine how tense things are."</b>Â <!--emo&
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"I'll be good" quipped Karzai, at solo talks at the White House on Tuesday, which followed Musharraf's visit to the Oval Office with Bush last week.
<b>Musharraf fired the latest salvo in their war of words on Monday when he denied claims that Taliban leader Mullah Omar had found refuge on Pakistani soil and it was Afghanistan that was not doing enough to battle extremism.</b>
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The blast at the doorstep of Helmand Gov. Mohammed Daoud Safi's compound came on the same day a bombing against a    NATO patrol in the Kabul area killed an Italian soldier and a child, and two weeks after militants assassinated a governor in eastern    Afghanistan who had been a Karzai confidant.
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<b>Bush to test body language at Karzai-Musharraf summit </b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->WASHINGTON (AFP) -Â Â Â Â President George W. Bush will Wednesday sit round the White House dinner table with the presidents of Pakistan and Afghanistan, keen to size up tensions between two key "war on terror" allies.
Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf and Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai will join Bush amid suggestions that testy cross-border relations are hampering efforts to quell tribal violence and hunt down terrorist mastermind    Osama bin Laden.
<b>Bush said he would use the encounter to "to watch the body language of these two leaders to determine how tense things are."</b>Â <!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo--> "I'll be good" quipped Karzai, at solo talks at the White House on Tuesday, which followed Musharraf's visit to the Oval Office with Bush last week.
<b>Musharraf fired the latest salvo in their war of words on Monday when he denied claims that Taliban leader Mullah Omar had found refuge on Pakistani soil and it was Afghanistan that was not doing enough to battle extremism.</b>
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