VENDETTAS EYED IN HIT ON OFFICIAL

KABUL, Afghanistan - International peacekeepers agreed Monday to join
the investigation into the weekend slaying of Vice President Abdul
Qadir, as speculation mounted that the killing had more to do with
vendettas and business deals than with plots to undermine the government.

Deadlocked in its probe, President Hamid Karzai's government on Monday
asked the 19-nation International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF,
to help track down the killers.

The commander of the peacekeeping force, Turkish Maj. Gen. Hilmi Akin
Zorlu, said a joint task force will be formed, including
representatives of his command and the Afghan ministries of justice
and interior.

Qadir was shot dead along with a son-in-law Saturday as he was leaving
his office in downtown Kabul. The two gunmen escaped.

Zorlu said ISAF has put its 5,000 troops in the capital on higher
alert as a precaution against "such a terrible crime happening again."

Qadir, a guerrilla commander in the war against the Soviets in the
1980s, was the most prominent ethnic Pashtun in the government after
Karzai himself and also served as minister of public works and
governor of Nangarhar, a relatively rich province along the Pakistan
border and a center of commerce, smuggling and opium poppy growing.

No successor has been named for any of the three posts. However,
elders of Nangarhar asked the government to appoint Qadir's elder
brother, Din Mohammed, to all three positions.

Meanwhile, speculation was growing Monday among diplomats and some
Afghan officials that the killing could have been carried out by drug
barons or rival powerbrokers in Nangarhar province rather than by
Taliban or al-Qaida.

Qadir had been an influential figure in eastern Afghanistan for about
25 years and was a veteran of the country's often-bloody political
scene, earning him many enemies in a land where vendettas are often
used to settle old scores.

Earlier this year, Qadir's troops confiscated opium in the village of
Ghani Khiel, the country's largest opium market. It was widely rumored
that Qadir's men burned only 20 percent of the contraband and sold the
rest, enraging the opium dealers.

Afghans said Qadir also had a long-standing feud with a tribal leader
in Nangarhar province, whose brothers were killed by Qadir's men.

Abdul Khader, a professor of Islamic law at Kabul University,
speculated Qadir was killed either because of a private feud or he was
murdered by al-Qaida. "If it is al-Qaida, it means the other
government ministers are also in danger," he said.