NBC Nightly News

A number of major developments tonight in the US effort to improve its image in the Muslim world, including a significant setback. Today the president of Afghanistan, a US ally, demanded control over US military operations, including custody of all Afghan prisoners. This amid new details of abuse by US soldiers in Afghanistan. We begin tonight with NBC’s Bob Kur.

BOB KUR reporting:

President Bush returning from an appearance in Michigan today, looking ahead to Monday’s meeting with Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai. But Karzai is furious about new reports of deadly prisoner abuse by American soldiers in his country.

President HAMID KARZAI: It has shocked me totally, and we–we–we condemn it, we–we want the US government to take very, very strong action to take away people like that that are working with the forces in Afghanistan definitely. A strong, clear-cut action should be taken against that, and I’ll say that also when I’m in the United States.

KUR: He says he’ll tell President Bush that his government wants custody of Afghan prisoners and control of US military operations.

Dr. WALID PHARES (Middle East Expert): President Karzai is the first president after the Taliban. He still has around him pressures and threats from his political enemies. He needs to show himself as politically independent.

KUR: The two leaders have met several times.

President GEORGE W. BUSH: I’m proud to call President Karzai a strong ally.

KUR: Today in his weekly radio address, the president praise the nation’s progress

Pres. BUSH: Afghanistan now has a constitution and an elected president. A nation that once knew only the terror of the Taliban is now seeing a rebirth of freedom.

KUR: But Karzai’s trip comes just days after violent anti-US protests in Afghanistan, and renewed attacks by Taliban loyalists that killed another American soldier and wounded three others today, raising the US death toll in Afghanistan to 144.

With more than 16,000 American troops there now, Karzai wants a long-term strategic relationship with the US, economic and military. The US wants a guarantee that Americans can use Afghan air space and bases when necessary.

But flowers, not guns, may be the biggest threat. Cultivation of poppies for opium is on the rise, and, according to US officials, expanding the influence of drug traffickers who have ties to the Taliban.

The US has budgeted hundreds of millions of dollars to battle opium production in Afghanistan. Some US officials don’t believe Karzai is doing enough to help. And about Karzai’s complaints of prisoner abuse, the White House says the president is alarmed by the reports and that people already are being held accountable. Bob Kur, NBC News, at the White House.