The UN Security Council sent a high-ranking delegation to Afghanistan yesterday to bolster the country’s leader, Hamid Karzai, amid signs that his authority is steadily slipping to powerful warlords and warnings that an opium boom could turn Afghanistan into a failed state run by drug cartels. The delegation, including the UN ambassadors of the United States, Britain, France, Mexico, Spain and Bulgaria, are aiming to demonstrate the international community’s commitment to rebuilding the country, said the head of the mission, Germany’s UN ambassador Gunter Pleuger. The ambassadors are to visit Herat and Mazar-i-Sharif, he said, to pressure powerful regional warlords “to co-operate fully with the central government” so elections next year can be held in a climate of stability. “We will speak to the local warlords and call to their attention the responsibility for the whole country demanded from them, that they work together with the central government, economically, politically and above all for security,” he said. Full Story