AFGHANISTAN - April 3 - Suspected Conspiracy Linked To Anti-Western Warlord.

Kabul security officials say they have arrested more than 200 of their political opponents in the last 48 hours, claiming they have broken up a conspiracy to mount a terror campaign against Interim PM Hamid Karzai and former king Mohammad Zahir Shah. Among those arrested was Wahidullah Zahabaun, former finance minister for the Northern Alliance and a former member of Hezb-i-Islami. The officials say the conspiracy is linked to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a long-time warlord known for his anti-Western views and ruthlessness on the battlefield. Those arrested are said to have travelled recently to Pakistan and Iran, where Hekmatyar was last seen. (Hekmatyar, blamed for more than 50,000 civilian deaths in his rocket attacks on the capital in the mid-1990s, left Iran earlier this year after he vowed to expel foreigners from Afghanistan and topple the US-backed government). Most of those arrested are ethnic Pashtuns, who have complained since Karzai took power in Dec. 2001 that the government is dominated by ethnic Tadjiks, who formed the core of the resistance to the Taliban. Analysts say the arrests illustrate the extreme fragility of the US-backed enterprise in the country.