Washington: US President George W Bush called his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai and apologised for the way he was treated at a meeting with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a media report on March 11 said.

"Bush called to say he was really sorry about how things had gone in the Senate, and that Karzai should not have been treated like that," a report in 'The Washington Post' said quoting Afghan officials.

During the conversation last week, Bush offered to make his apology public but Karzai declined, it said.

During the Committee's hearing, Republican Senator Chuck Hagel had warned Karzai that if he told the Committee that everything was going well in Afghanistan, "the next time you come back, then your credibility will be in question".

Hagel said later that he felt that the administration had "coached" Karzai about what he should tell the Committee.

Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer, holding up a recent report of Human Rights Watch, told Karzai, "Police in Herat are detaining women and girls caught alone with unrelated men, are being forced to submit to medical examinations to see if they have recently had sexual relations."

Karzai was said to have been furious over such questioning, said the 'Post'.

"We thought these people were our friends," a senior Afghan government official told the daily. "Now we really don't know. This was a protocol blunder, and there was real insensitivity on the part of some Senators. They were talking about nitty- gritty problems in Afghanistan and missing the big picture that there is a war on terrorism going on while we try to make a country again from scratch."

PTI