Afghanistan in focus for top U.N. diplomats

Afghan village leaders talks with U.S. officers discussing the issues of security and social cooperation with a picture of Afghan President Hamid Karzai on the background in a millitary base of Gorgan, in Dand district, south of Kandahar, June 21, 2010.

KABUL (Reuters) - Senior U.N. diplomats were on their way to the Afghan capital on Monday, and the U.S. special envoy was also in the country, on a day when the death of nine foreign troops added to a bloody month in the nine-year-old insurgency.

The government also announced the release of 14 suspected Taliban fighters -- including two would-be suicide bombers -- a promise it made after a national peace meeting endorsed the president's plan to make overtures to the insurgents.

The U.N. ambassadors are on a fact-finding mission ahead of a debate at the world body's headquarters later this month, while U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke was visiting to see progress on an operation that takes on the Taliban in their spiritual heartland.

Their visits coincided with a helicopter crash that killed an American and three Australian special forces commandos, as well as the separate deaths of five other members of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in improvised explosive device (IED) blasts or small arms attacks.

Britain said the Monday death of a marine, from injuries received earlier this year, brought to 300 the number of its service members killed as a result of the Afghan war.

June has been a particularly bad month for the U.S-dominated foreign force with the deaths so far of 64 service members -- just as a peak of around 150,000 troops is about to be reached.

With President Barack Obama wanting a withdrawal to start in 2011, questions remain about the ability of Afghan forces to tackle a Taliban insurgency that is stronger than ever.

Last week, the U.N. official who monitors the Taliban and al Qaeda, Richard Barrett, said U.S. goals in Afghanistan would be incredibly hard to reach.

"However many of them you kill, there'll be more coming over the hill," said Barrett, a former British intelligence official.

"You're not dealing with people who you punch hard and they run away. They're not going to run away."

At a national gathering of tribal leaders, elders and other notables this month, President Hamid Karzai won support for a modest peace plan that included reviewing the cases of thousands of prisoners, including Taliban, in Afghan jails.

The United States, which holds hundreds of prisoners in separate jails, said it would follow suit and 12 of those released on Monday came from their Bagram jail.

Afghans complain that scores of people are arrested on trumped up charges or flimsy evidence, and corruption is rife.

A key part of the forthcoming operation into the southern region of Kandahar, a traditional Taliban stronghold, relies on Karzai improving governance and development on the back of improved security.

Business is booming in the capital, Kabul, but some of the new construction has been funded by the drugs trade that the U.N. said in a report on Monday was now also striking Afghans hard.

Afghanistan is the source of over 90 percent of the world's heroin, but the report said nearly 3 percent of the population was now addicted, putting it alongside Russia and Iran, the worst affected.

A government roadshow in London this week will attempt to lure investors to a vast iron deposit, part of $1 trillion in mineral resources as a report last week reminded Afghans, but massive infrastructure projects would be needed to tap into it.

(Additional reporting by Sayed Salahuddin and Dan Williams; Editing by Ron Popeski)