Rice Challenges Report on Afghan President

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, June 27 -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who arrived here Tuesday at the start of a trip that will also take her to Russia, announced she will go to Afghanistan on Wednesday morning to bolster support for embattled Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

On the flight here Rice fervently defended Karzai as an "extraordinary leader," dismissing a report in The Washington Post that he is losing Afghan and foreign support.

"Is it hard? Yeah, it's really hard," Rice told reporters on her plane. "But this is somebody who has taken his country from civil war and virtually total destruction in four years to an honorable position in the international community."

The Post, in a dispatch from the Afghan capital of Kabul, reported Monday that a rift was growing between Karzai and some of the foreign governments that have supported him, with several European governments expressing serious concerns about his leadership. Rice criticized the article for relying on European and Western diplomats who declined to be identified.

"What does that mean? Who are they? For whom do they speak? And what level do they speak?" Rice asked. "I have not heard this from my counterparts. Steve Hadley doesn't hear this from his counterparts," she said, referring to President Bush's national security adviser. "The president doesn't hear this from his counterparts."

Instead, Rice said she has heard from European governments "time and time again we are really lucky to have President Karzai."

The United States "is going back him and back him fully," Rice said. "And when he has problems, we are going to sit with him and we are going to find ways to resolve those problems."