Hamid Karzai, chosen to lead the new Afghanistan, has said 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. 
"I am very, very determined...Terrorism has made our people suffer unbelievably difficult times," he said in a late-night interview in Rome with Reuters Television. 
Speaking at a hotel in the Italian capital soon after he had received the encouragement of Afghanistan's exiled former king, Karzai also said he would be happy with a foreign peacekeeping force of any size necessary to be beneficial to his country. 
"They have killed us," he said of the ousted Taliban and their foreign allies in Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. 
"They have destroyed our orchards. They have destroyed our vineyards. They tried to destroy Afghanistan. 
"They tried to destroy the essence of Afghans. I am very determined to get rid of them, not only in Afghanistan but in the rest of the world too." 

Earlier, Karzai had received the blessing and the personal Koran of the ex-king, Mohammad Zahir Shah. 
"That was a tremendous, good gesture and a very good blessing," Karzai said. 
Karzai, who was expected to return to Kabul later on Wednesday, said he felt the enormous load of his responsibility but that the possibility of success was great because of the backing of the international community. 
He said he was not daunted by the challenge of trying to unify Afghanistan, where many of the groups that ousted the hardline Taliban from power were bitter foes of the past. 
Memories are still fresh of the ethnic conflict of the early 1990s, when street battles between rival warlords, Tajiks and Hazaras, Uzbeks and Pashtuns, reduced much of Kabul to rubble. 
Karzai said he hoped there could be agreement on the size of an international peacekeeping force, adding that he would accept "any number that makes the task feasible, the task beneficial." 
But he also stressed: "There is total agreement by all concerned that Afghanistan must have a national army that should be totally under the control of the Ministry of Defence and a national police force under the total control of the Ministry of the Interior." 

"Warlordism must end and the rule of the gun must end in Afghanistan and the Afghan people must be able to choose their destiny themselves and have their government chosen themselves." 
Karzai was asked what he would tell bin Laden if he were in the same room with the Saudi militant whom Washington has blamed for the September attacks against the United States. 
"I won't meet him in the same room. I'll have him arrested before he reaches my room and have him tried," he said. 

"Anywhere. Anywhere that he can see the evils that he has done to the people of the world and to the Afghan people, that the Afghan people finally get some justice for what he and his friend Mullah Omar did to Afghanistan and to the rest of the world," he said, referring also to the fugitive Taliban leader. 
Former king Zahir Shah, who said he had given Karzai "lots of advice" during their meeting on Tuesday night, is due to return to Kabul himself 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. 
"He does not intend to go in any official capacity. He is now going back to Afghanistan as an Afghan, a great capacity," Karzai said earlier when he met the former king. 
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