Afghan president changes interior minister

The Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, has replaced his Interior Minister, Taj Mohammad Wardag, with a former resistance leader.

The new minister is Ali Ahmad Jalali, who was a senior military commander in the mujahideen rebellion against Soviet occupation in the 1980s.

He has recently returned from the United States where he was head of the Pashto and Persian service for an international radio station (Voice of America).

The ministerial change follows criticism of the way Mr Wardag handled student demonstrations in Kabul last year in which at least one person was killed.

There were also complaints about the security situation in Afghanistan

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service