KABUL (PAN): Under mounting pressure from the global fraternity to combat the menace of endemic corruption, President Hamid Karzai has urged senior government officials to declare their assets and sources of income. Addressing a conference on measures to combat corruption here on Tuesday, the president acknowledged the scourge of graft plagued government departments. While stressing the eradication of corruption, he asked officials to explain their income sources. The head of state wondered how government functionaries, after one or two years of work, amassed wealth, vacationed abroad and purchased houses in Dubai. In the keynote speech, he suggested frugality and a simple lifestyle as ways of countering bribery and unfair practices. Administrative reforms and the establishment of an effective anti-graft system were necessary, he agreed, but hastened to explain that a mechanism ending the culture of impunity would take time to evolve. Some time fighting corruption spawned even more corruption, the president observed while stressing that such a drive should not trigger vendettas. "We should be very careful, mindful of the fact that the fight itself should not cause more corruption." In a bid to prove his point, Karzai referred to the first high-profile conviction on graft charges over the last nine years. He hailed Kabul Mayor Abdul Ahad Sahibi, who was sentenced to four years in prison last week, as a clean man. He claimed the mayor, sitting among the attendees, had been victimised by his opponents for declining to gift them government land. Sahibi was bailed out soon after his arrest as a result of his conviction that he has challenged. Karzai asked the attorney-general and the Supreme Court chief justice to look into the mayor's case to determine whether he had been sentenced rightly. If the may had really embezzled funds, the president remarked, he should stay in jail for four years. But if the accusations were false, he asked, why a respectable person should be defamed. "Being a realist, I know that corruption in our government and society cannot be eliminated overnight. We cannot even eliminate it in years. The goal here is we should do what produces results," the president added. A little while before Karzai delivered his address, eight people were killed and 40 others wounded in a huge suicide bombing that rocked the high-security Wazir Akbar Khan neighbourhood. The powerful car bomb exploded near the venue of the moot in the diplomatic enclave. Wolesi Jirga Speaker Yunus Qanuni, Meshrano Jirga Chairman Sibghatullah Mujaddedi, parliamentarians, Kabul-based ambassadors, senior officials and experts were in attendance on the first day of moot that will go on until Thursday. Muhammad Yasin Osmani, head of the High Office of Oversight and Anti-Corruption, said the aim of the conference was to float useful, specific and workable suggestions for curbing corruption. He believed any anti-graft campaign should be holistic and must begin at the top. Osmani viewed impunity and mockery of law as huge challenges to the fight against graft. He also called for eradicating poverty and establishing a system of rewards and punishment. Attorney General (AG) Muhammad Ishaq Aloko said the commitment of all relevant organs was essential in banishing corruption. The AG described strong support for the influential people accused of graft and threats of beheading and abduction hurled at prosecutors as key hurdles to his office. Sayed Massoud, a lecturer at the Kabul University, told Pajhwok Afghan News such conferences could be effective only when their suggestions were implemented. "If their recommendations are not enforced, people's trust in such events will vanish." mnm/mud