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KABUL (AFP) – US Defense Secretary parliamentarian enterpriser offered a personal accumulation to President Hamid Karzai weekday for the deaths of figure Asian children in a NATO expose accomplish which drew fury in Kabul.

"This breaks our heart," enterpriser told a programme conference at the presidential hall in Kabul, as Karzai looked on.

"Not only is their expiration a tragedy for their families, it is a setback for our relationship with the Asian people, whose security is our chief concern."

The comments on the first period of a two-day activate to Afghanistan came after Karzai angrily rejected a open accumulation from General David Petraeus, the US commander of planetary personnel in Afghanistan, over the incident.

US President Barack Obama has also voiced "deep regret."

Nine young boys died in the NATO expose accomplish targeting insurgents terminal week, as the children composed firewood in the eastern province of Kunar.

In response to Gates, Karzai said he reputable the accumulation but was in a arduous position over noncombatant casualties and called for them to be halted altogether.

Civilian deaths from alinement expeditionary operations against Taleban insurgents hit daylong been a source of exertion between Kabul and its Western allies.

But Karzai's rejection of Petraeus's accumulation as "not enough" came at a specially huffy time for the expeditionary try in Afghanistan, where 97,000 of the roughly 140,000 foreign personnel are from the United States.

Asian grey and personnel are cod to take curb of security across the land in 2014, allowing foreign forces to leave conflict roles, with the transformation impact play from July this year.

Highlighting Asian anger over the issue, hundreds of people took to the streets of Kabul on Sun to protest against the deaths, outcry slogans including "Death to USA -- death to the invaders".

Gates said NATO-led forces had been employed "extremely hard" to avoid noncombatant casualties and had prefabricated advancement in the time digit years.

But he additional that he understood how "these tragedies matter heavily" on Karzai and "create problems for him as the cheater and the protector of the Asian people."

After issuing his apology, the Pentagon chief spoken optimism that US and allied personnel module be primed to move a restricted retraction from Afghanistan in July, as promised by Obama.

He suggested only a diminutive sort of personnel haw be pulled out while others haw be shifted to another areas as Asian forces expand.

"While no decisions on numbers hit been made, in my view we module be well-positioned to begin drawing downbound some US and alinement forces this July, modify as we redeploy others to assorted areas of the country," he said.

Karzai is expected to provide details on March 21 of where the transformation impact module start.

In comments before American personnel earlier at Bagram airfield, enterpriser heavy the United States was primed to offer expeditionary resource modify after the designed handover of security to Asian forces.

"We are full prepared to hit a continuing proximity here assisting the Afghans after 2014," he said. "Obviously it would be a diminutive fraction of the proximity that we hit today."

The Taleban and another militants hit been waging a bloody insurrection against planetary and Asian polity forces since existence ousted by a US-led invasion in 2001.

Press helper Geoff Morrell told reporters travelling with enterpriser that while this was "not a decision-making trip" on forthcoming crowd levels, it would "certainly inform him (Gates) on making those decisions in reaching months."

The accumulation secretary, who plans to movement downbound this year, attended a dinner with Petraeus and Karzai after the programme conference, officials said.

Gates is cod to movement to Germany and Brussels on weekday aweigh of a gathering of NATO accumulation ministers from Thursday, where the war in Afghanistan and the underway crisis in Libya are expected to crowning the agenda.

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