Prime Minister in Afghanistan

8.00am

Prime Minister Helen Clark has met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and attended a dinner at the presidential palace in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

The Prime Minister is on a two-day visit to Afghanistan which will include a trip tomorrow to the central city of Bamiyan where about 100 New Zealand troops under a US-led anti-terror coalition are based.

The New Zealand personnel are on a one-year mission to help with reconstruction in Afghanistan following a US invasion last year to oust the country's Taleban rulers and track down Osama bin Laden, believed by the US to have been responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

During a brief meeting today with Helen Clark, President Karzai thanked New Zealand for supplying troops to rebuild his country.

Helen Clark left New Zealand on Tuesday afternoon, giving most news media about three hours' notice through a press statement of her intention to visit New Zealand Defence Force personnel in the Middle East.

Neither she nor Defence would say which countries she was going to.

She is travelling on an Air Force jet with the Secretary of Defence, Graham Fortune, Chief of Defence Force Bruce Ferguson and deputy secretary of foreign affairs Michael Green.

- AGENCIES