Monday, January 9 2006 10:09 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Kabul: President Hamid Karzai yesterday (Jan 08, 2006) invited Taliban leader Mullah Omar to reconcile with the government, but said he thinks the fugitive won't come out of hiding and that suicide attacks will continue in Afghanistan for 'a long time'.

But the US-backed leader, in an exclusive interview at his palace in the capital, Kabul, said a booming drug trade is a greater threat to Afghanistan than terrorism, endangering its very existence as a nation-state.

Omar has been in hiding since US-led forces ousted his fundamentalist Islamic regime four years ago for hosting Osama bin Laden.

He is believed to be leading holdouts in a rebellion against Karzai's government, leaving about 1,600 people dead last year the most since 2001.

Karzai, who won a five-year term as the war-battered nation's first democratically elected leader in 2004, invited all Afghans, 'Taliban or non-Taliban', to help rebuild the country, and said that includes Omar.

"If he wants to come, he should get in touch with us", the president said.

"We would see what he has to say, of course", Karzai said. "But I don't think he will come. He has so much on his hands against Afghanistan. We don't even know as to where he is hiding. He has to first give us an account as to what he's done".

US officials have said they believe Omar and bin Laden are hiding in rugged mountains on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Karzai said terrorism has been 'relegated to little more than a nuisance' when compared with the drug scourge the country faces.

Afghanistan is the world's biggest producer of illegal narcotics, yielding enough opium to make about 450 tons of heroin last year sparking warnings the country is fast becoming a 'narco-state'.

Karzai said the problem has criminalized the economy, tainted the country's image, hindered the development of strong government institutions and undermined young people's lives. He claimed criminal gangs, including some from Europe, threaten to kill farmers if they don't turn to cultivating poppies.

"We have reports of the mafia, from rest of the world, coming and actively encouraging drugs in Afghanistan", Karzai said. "They are not only from Russia, they are in Europe, they are in Afghanistan, they are in the neighbours of Afghanistan, they are everywhere".

Karzai said that the Taliban resistance to his US-backed government was fading, but that he still expected suicide attacks, which he viewed as a sign of the anti-government forces' 'desperation' to continue in Afghanistan 'for a long time'.

The past four months has seen a spate of about 20 suicide bombings, once a comparative rarity in Afghanistan.

"We will have this for a long time", Karzai said. "We are ready to face them. We will be after them wherever we find them".

Separately, Karzai said NATO-led troops taking over security in southern Afghanistan this year must not use aggressive tactics, including air strikes or searches of people's homes, without government permission.