THOUSANDS MOURN AFGHAN V.P.'S DEATH

Officials Speculate Qadir's Assassination Was Related To Drug-Fighting Programs

JALALABAD, Afghanistan - Vice President Haji Abdul Qadir was buried
yesterday with full military honors a day after he was gunned down in an
attack that Afghans fear might bring new instability to a nation struggling
to build peace after decades of war.

About 10,000 people followed Qadir's body as it was transported on a gun
carriage from Jalalabad's White Mosque to Amir Shaheed Gardens in the city
center. Afghan troops in full uniform marched in the procession.

As the body, wrapped in a green, red and black Afghan flag, was lowered
into the grave, a Pashto-language poem read over a loudspeaker hailed Qadir
as "a unique man" and "a hero of Afghanistan." Seven shots were fired into
the air, and mourners wept and chanted his name.

Qadir, who also served as minister of public works and governor of
Nangarhar province, died Saturday in a hail of bullets after two gunmen
opened fire on his vehicle as he was leaving his office in Kabul. His
driver, who was his son-in-law, was also killed. The gunmen escaped.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai will call for foreign help in cracking the
case if local authorities are unable to make progress in their own
investigation, Afghan television reported yesterday.

State-run television said two men had been detained for questioning after
they were stopped at a Kabul checkpoint in a car similar to the one used by
the killers for their getaway.

No one claimed responsibility for the attack. Turkish army Col. Samet Oz,
spokesman for the 5,000-member peacekeeping force in Kabul, described the
killing as "an individual attack designed to destabilize the transitional
government."

Afghan officials said yesterday that they were investigating the
possibility that Qadir had been killed by drug lords who had been
double-crossed in a Western-backed campaign to destroy the country's poppy
crop that Qadir had been overseeing.

A senior Afghan official said Qadir had recently complained that promised
aid money was not being distributed to farmers who were bowing to his
demand to uproot their poppies. The Afghan official said Qadir's efforts,
coupled with the failure to pay certain farmers, might have enraged
powerful members of the country's opium trade. Those drug lords, the Afghan
official said, might have decided to take revenge.

Qadir, a wealthy businessman from Jalalabad, had long been suspected of
enriching himself through involvement in the opium trade. Some Afghans
speculated that Qadir might have made enemies by favoring one drug lord
over another.

Qadir was the most prominent ethnic Pashtun in the government after Karzai
himself, and his assassination threatens to stir unrest in Nangarhar
province, a relatively wealthy trading and opium poppy-growing region that
borders Pakistan.

Instability in such a key region could complicate efforts by the Karzai
government to extend its authority beyond Kabul. Qadir was one of five vice
presidents appointed in last month's grand council, or loya jirga, to bring
ethnic balance into a government that had been dominated by ethnic Tajiks.

In a speech to the mourners, Afghan Chief Justice Fazle Hadi Shinwari
promised that the government was doing everything possible to find the
killers and he urged people to remain calm.

"This is a test for the people of Afghanistan, of Nangarhar," he said.
"They should be aware of this and pass this test."

Throughout the day, armed police manned checkpoints on all approaches to
Jalalabad and roamed the largely deserted streets. Most merchants closed
their stores, although Sunday is a business day.