New Afghan leader Hamid Karzai was due to arrive in Kabul Wednesday, vowing to fight terrorism to "its absolute end," as U.S. special forces hunted Osama bin Laden ( news - web sites ) and remnants of his al Qaeda fighters.
Yemen gave a taste of the pressure bin Laden might face outside Afghanistan ( news - web sites ) after storming a hide-out of Islamic militants linked to the Saudi-born exile, the first action of its kind in the Arabian peninsula nation since the September attacks on the United States.
In Kabul, the country's new rulers and the U.S.-led coalition inched toward agreement on deploying foreign peace forces in the capital. Coalition leaders Britain and the United States want a peace force in place when the new government takes office this weekend.
Karzai said Wednesday he felt the great weight of his task but vowed to end terrorism, warlordism and the rule of the gun in a country he wants to rebuild almost from scratch.
"They have killed us," Karzai said of the ousted Taliban and their foreign allies in bin Laden's al Qaeda network.

receiving the blessing of Afghanistan's exiled former king.
There was "total agreement by all concerned that Afghanistan must have a national army that should be totally under the control of the Ministry of Defense and a national police force under total control of the Ministry of the Interior," he said.
Karzai met in Rome with the 87-year-old exiled former Afghan king Mohammad Zahir Shah, due to return home next year to open a Loya Jirga, or grand council, to map out the country's future as part of a U.N.-sponsored peace plan.
Afghan fighters marched down from peaks around Tora Bora village near the Pakistan border Tuesday, signaling the destruction of al Qaeda forces in an area believed to be bin Laden's last Afghanistan redoubt.
Villagers looking for firewood and salvaging their homes climbed into the rugged hills, honeycombed with caves and tunnels where bin Laden and his fighters were suspected of hiding out.
U.S. special forces returned from the hills empty-handed in the hunt for bin Laden, the millionaire militant accused of masterminding the carnage at the World Trade Center and Pentagon ( news - web sites ).