Meanwhile, two U.S. soldiers and several militants were killed in firefights in the volatile southeast Monday, further underlining fragile security ahead of the vote.

Nayiamatullah Shahrani, one of four Afghan vice presidents, and Urban Development Minister Gul Agha Sherzai were on their way to inspect a road project in northern Kunduz province when the explosion rocked their convoy, police said.

The remote-controlled bomb, hidden at a roadside in Khanabad district, damaged a car in the 20-vehicle convoy that was carrying Shahrani's bodyguards, slightly hurting one of them with flying glass, Police Chief Mutaleb Beg said.

Beg blamed "enemies" for the attack, but didn't elaborate. No one was immediately arrested. The incident was confirmed by an aide to Karzai - who was in New York for this week's United Nations annual session of the General Assembly.

On Thursday, Karzai aborted his first major campaign event when suspected Taliban fired a rocket at the U.S. military helicopter carrying him to a school opening in southeastern Afghanistan.

No one was hurt in that attack, but it underscored the threat against Karzai and his U.S.-backed government in the face of a stubborn Taliban-led insurgency.

More than 900 people, including 12 election workers, have died in political violence across Afghanistan so far this year, and officials are braced for more bloodshed in the run-up to the balloting - Afghanistan's first direct presidential vote, supposed to cap the three-year international drive to stabilize the war-torn country.

Most of the violence has come in the south and east, where the U.S. military reported four separate skirmishes Monday.

The two U.S. soldiers were killed in a firefight with insurgents in Paktika, a lawless province where al-Qaida fighters as well as Taliban rebels are believed to operate.

Two other Americans were slightly wounded and six Afghan government troops were evacuated to a U.S. base for treatment, a military statement said.

The names of the dead were not immediately released.

According to the Defense Department, 137 U.S. military personnel have died during Operation Enduring Freedom, launched after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

At least 99 of the fatalities have been in or around Afghanistan, and 54 have been troops killed in action.

In Zabul province, a focus of the insurgency neighboring Paktika, U.S.-led forces killed several militants in a clash north the provincial capital, Qalat.

Coalition forces also came under fire near Deh Rawood, a town in Uruzgan province where American forces maintain a base, and in another unspecified location.

One more Afghan soldier was injured, the statement said. No other coalition casualties were reported.

U.S. and Afghan officials believe that militants are able to slip back and forth over the porous Pakistani border to mount attacks in Afghanistan, and the U.S. military said Monday it believed rebel leaders were holding strategy meetings there.

"Relatively high-ranking" members of the Taliban, al-Qaida and followers of renegade Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar have held "several meetings" in Pakistan, U.S. spokesman Maj. Scott Nelson said.

Nelson said the militants were brainstorming on how to repel intensified militant operations by Pakistani and U.S.-led forces on both sides of the border, as well as how to attack the vote.

The Pakistani government said the idea was "baseless."

"Al-Qaida and remnants of the Taliban regime are on the run in Pakistan. They cannot hold conferences," Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan said in Islamabad.

He said the U.S. military was "looking in the wrong direction. The real danger lies inside Afghanistan" from warlords, drug traffickers and insurgents, he said.

Sound Off...What do you think? Join the discussion.


Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.