Hamid Karzai was sworn in as Afghanistan's first popularly elected president on Tuesday at a ceremony attended by two of the men most responsible for easing him into power.

Scores of foreign dignitaries , including U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, watched as Karzai placed his hand on the Koran to take an oath of allegiance in the heavily fortified presidential palace in Kabul.

An Afghan boy holds a portrait of President Hamid Karzai during rehearsals for the upcoming inauguration in Kabul airport on December 5, 2004. A ring of steel was placed around the Afghan capital on Dec. 7 as Hamid Karzai prepared to be sworn in as the country's first popularly elected President at a ceremony attended by two of the figures most responsible for easing him into power. [Reuters]

The inauguration passed off peacefully despite threats by guerrillas from the former Taliban regime that they would disrupt Karzai's investiture, which comes after he won a historic first democratic presidential election on October 9.

"...Our fight against terrorism is not yet over, although we have succeeded to reduce this common enemy of humanity," Karzai said in an acceptance speech, broadcast live.

"The relationship between terrorism and narcotics however and the threat of extremism in the region...is a source of continued concern," he said, referring to worries over Afghanistan being the world's main supplier of heroin.

At least six Taliban fighters and three soldiers were killed in Afghanistan's southeastern province of Khost in a Taliban raid late on Monday, a provincial military official said.

Cheney and Rumsfeld are two of the most hawkish members of President Bush's cabinet and key architects of the Washington-backed war that overthrew the Taliban in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Washington then named Karzai as interim leader of the war-torn nation and he was later endorsed by a tribal council.

Cheney and Rumsfeld spoke to U.S. troops hunting remnants of the Taliban and al Qaeda still active in the country during a visit to Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul, early on Tuesday.

"This is not an enemy that we can reason with or negotiate with or appease," Cheney said, adding it was "an enemy who we must destroy."

Rumsfeld weighed in with a pledge that the 18,000-strong U.S. force would be withdrawn once their mission was accomplished.

"Our goal is not to stay here, but to come and do the job and leave it a lot better than we found it," he told the troops.

THREE DECADES OF CONFLICT

Representatives from 27 foreign delegations attended Karzai's oath-taking, including U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special advisor Lakhdar Brahimi, NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavron, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi, Indian Foreign Minister Natwar Singh, Pakistan's Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao and the presidents of neighboring Kazakhstan and Tajikistan.

But no nation has given Afghanistan as much support as the United States or have as much at stake in ensuring the country emerges from nearly three decades of conflict.

"We thank the people of the United States of America for bringing us this day, a day of peace, a day of democracy, a day of empowerment of the Afghan people," Karzai told a joint news conference with Cheney just before being sworn in.

U.S. forces in Afghanistan are still hunting for Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, who remains a taunting menace to U.S. interests around the world.

The Taliban attacked Afghan military posts on Monday night in Khost's rugged Ali Sher district near the Pakistan border -- an area that was a bin Laden stronghold during the Taliban's rule.

Kheyal Baaz Sherzai, the Afghan military commander in the area, said a large force of Taliban militants armed with mortars and heavy machine guns took part in the raid, but they fled toward the Pakistan border once a counter offensive was mounted.

Security at Karzai's fortress-like presidential palace was extremely tight, with large numbers of Afghan and U.S.-led troops deployed and several key roads in Kabul closed to traffic.

Mullah Dadullah, the most senior Taliban military commander and a member of the movement's 10-man leadership council, had warned people to stay away from government and military installations throughout Afghanistan during the inauguration.

ROCKET STRIKES FEARED

NATO-led peacekeepers stepped up ground and air patrols to guard against rocket strikes on the presidential palace.

Peacekeepers drove armored vehicles through the streets of Kabul on pre-dawn patrols in frosty weather, helicopters circled overhead, while rapid reaction forces were placed on alert.

A measure of the worry about militant attacks was that VIPs were asked to supply their blood groups as a precaution.

Militant-related violence across Afghanistan since August last year has killed more than 1,000 people and has included several bomb and rocket attacks in Kabul.

The violence has persisted despite the presence of U.S. forces and 8,400 NATO-led peacekeepers mainly based in Kabul.

After Tuesday's ceremony, all eyes will be on who Karzai picks for his new cabinet expected to be announced next week.

Its make-up is seen as crucial to whether the country can now chart a course of reform away from weak central control, regional warlords and an economy dominated by the drugs trade.