President Hamid Karzai is walking a fine diplomatic line between America, his military and financial backer, and a rising tide of dissent over allied air raids which are killing civilians.
In the first anti-American protests since the fall of the Taleban last year, 200 people demonstrated in Kabul on Thursday against the deaths in an allied air raid of dozens of villagers at a wedding party.
One protester outside the United Nations office said: 'We consider the Americans our liberators, but after this, they may soon become occupiers.'
US and Afghan investigators are combing the site in southern Uruzgan province where Afghans claim 46 people were killed. Allied bombing and ground raids have intensified amid reports that Taleban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, who is from the area, is in hiding there.
The casualties on Monday were not the first blamed on allied raids. Since the start of the US-led war in October, independent tallies indicate between 3,000 and 8,000 civilian deaths.
Human rights and civil groups have been pushing without success for compensation from the US government. President George W. Bush's administration has yet to acknowledge blame or offer compensation. On Tuesday, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld repeated that such incidents were unavoidable during war, but 'we don't presume to know about it until we've completed some sort of an investigation'.
The military said the village was the source of anti-aircraft fire directed at US planes. Investigators have found only five graves.
