KABUL, Afghanistan: Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Monday that his national securityteam has been receiving payments from the U.S. government for the past 10 years.

Karzai confirmed the payments when he was asked about a story published in The New York Times saying the CIA had given the Afghan National Security Council tens of millions of dollars in monthly payments delivered in suitcases, backpacks and plastic shopping bags.

During a news conference in Helsinki, Finland, where he was on an official visit, Karzai said the welcome monthly payments were not a “big amount” but were a “small amount,” although he did not disclose the sums. He said they were used to give assistance to the wounded and sick, to pay rent for housing and for other “operational” purposes.

He said the aid has been “very useful, and we are grateful for it.”

The newspaper quotes Khalil Roman, who served as Mr. Karzai’s deputy chief of staff from 2002 until 2005, as calling the vast CIA payments “ghost money” that “came in secret, and it left in secret.” It also quotes unidentified American officials as saying that “the cash has fueled corruption and empowered warlords, undermining Washington’s exit strategy from Afghanistan.”

In Washington, the CIA declined to comment on the newspaper report.

In 2010, Iran acknowledged that it had been sending funds to neighboring Afghanistan for years, but said the money was intended to aid reconstruction, not to buy influence in Karzai’s office. The Afghan president confirmed he was receiving millions of dollars in cash from Iran and that Washington was giving him “bags of money,” too, because his office lacked funds.

At the time, President Barack Obama’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, denied that the U.S. government was in “the big bags of cash business,” but former U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley had said earlier that some of the American aid to Afghanistan was in cash.

U.S. officials also asserted then that the money flowing from Tehran was proof that Iran was playing a double game in Afghanistan — wooing the government while helping Taliban insurgents fighting U.S. and NATO forces. Iran denied that.

In the south, three U.S. service members, two U.S. civilians and the doctor were killed when a suicide bomber detonated a car full of explosives just as a convoy with the international military coalition drove past another convoy of vehicles carrying the governor of Zabul province.

Another American civilian was killed in an insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan, the U.S. military said in a statement.

The attacks occurred the same day that U.S. Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, arrived in Afghanistan for a visit aimed at assessing the level of training that American troops can provide to Afghan security forces after international combat forces complete their withdrawal at the end of 2014.

Those killed in Zabul province included three members of the military and two U.S. civilians, including at least one employee with the U.S. State Department, said a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of a formal announcement. Several other Americans and Afghans, possibly as many as nine, were wounded, the official said.

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul confirmed that Americans were involved in an attack in Qalat, the capital of Zabul province. Zabul is next to Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban, and shares a volatile border with Pakistan.

“There are American and Afghan casualties. We are still investigating the incident and cannot confirm details at this time,” the embassy said in a statement.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the attacks.

The deaths bring the number of foreign military forces killed this year to 30, including 22 Americans. A total of six foreign civilians have died in Afghanistan so far this year, according to an Associated Press count.

It was unclear if the car bomber was targeting the coalition convoy or that of Provincial Gov.Mohammad Ashraf Nasery, who was driving to an event at a nearby school in Qalat. The explosion occurred in front of a hospital.

Nasery, who survived the attack, said the car bomb exploded as his convoy was passing the hospital. He said a doctor was killed, and two of his bodyguards and a student from the school were wounded. The coalition convoy was leaving a base that is home to a provincial reconstruction team, or PRT, officials said.

“The governor’s convoy was at the gate of the school,” provincial police chief Gen. Ghulam Sakhi Rooghlawanay said. “At the same time the (coalition) convoy came out from the PRT and was passing by that place. The suicide bomber blew himself up between the two convoys.”

Nasery said he thought his convoy was the intended target.

“I’m safe and healthy,” he told The Associated Press in a telephone call. “The target was my vehicle, but I survived.”

Provincial government spokesman Din Mohammad Darwesh said the 2-day operation that ended Tuesday night in Logar province also killed a local Taliban commander.

He says two civilians were wounded in Baraki Barak district. There were no immediate reports of Afghan or international forces deaths.

The NATO military coalition says in a statement that the troops killed 24 insurgents as part of the operation that rescued two captured Afghan soldiers. Afghan officials gave varying numbers of 23 to 26 militants killed.

KABUL: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met again Tuesday with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, a day after they put on a show of unity as they tried to end recent bickering over anti-American comments made by the Afghan leader.

Kerry also met Tuesday at the American Embassy in Kabul with participants in a U.S.-backed women’s entrepreneurship program. He heard a succession of concerns from businesswomen fearful of what the 2014 transition will mean for not only for women and girls but for Afghanistan’s commerce in general.

Many advocates for women’s rights worry that the departure of international troops will lead to a deterioration in conditions for women, who were denied basic rights such as education underTaliban rule.

“After the transition happens, we are hoping for the same attention” as we get now, said Hassina Syed, who runs catering, construction and transportation firms. With the transition approaching “there is a lot of negative effect on the business sector,” she told Kerry.

Kerry also spoke with civic leaders preparing for Afghanistan’s 2014 elections, telling them he wanted to pay the “respects of everybody in America for the journey that you are on and for the great contribution you’re making to your country and the efforts you’re making to develop this democracy.”

“You’re engaged in a remarkable effort and the whole world is watching,” Kerry said.

Kerry arrived Monday in Kabul amid concerns that Karzai may be jeopardizing progress in the war against extremism with his rhetoric. Karzai infuriated U.S. officials earlier this month by accusing Washington of colluding with Taliban insurgents to keep Afghanistan weak even as the Obama administration pressed ahead with plans to hand off security responsibility to Afghan forces and end NATO’s combat mission by the end of next year.

After a private meeting, Kerry said he had asked Karzai about the comments and was very satisfied with the president’s explanation. He said the two countries were on the same page as international forces prepare to end combat operations in 2014.

At a joint news conference after his talks with Kerry, Karzai told reporters his comments in a nationally televised speech had been misinterpreted by the media. Kerry demurred on that point but said people sometimes say things in public that reflect ideas they have heard from others but don’t necessarily agree with.

“I am confident the president (Karzai) does not believe the U.S. has any interest except to see the Taliban come to the table to make peace and that we are completely cooperative with the government of Afghanistan with respect to the protection of their efforts and their people,” Kerry said.

KABUL: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Afghan President Hamid Karzai made a show of unity Monday, shortly after the U.S. military ceded control of its last detention facility inAfghanistan, ending a longstanding irritant in relations between the two countries.

Kerry, in Afghanistan for an unannounced visit, said he and Karzai were “on the same page” when it comes to peace talks with theTaliban.

Karzai had infuriated U.S. officials by accusing Washington of colluding with Taliban insurgents to keep Afghanistan weak even as the Obama administration presses ahead with plans to hand off security responsibility to Afghan forces and end NATO’s combat mission by the end of next year.

But Kerry told a joint news conference that “I am confident (Karzai) does not believe the U.S. has any interest except to see the Taliban come to the table to make peace.”

“So we’re on the same page. I don’t think there is any disagreement between us and I am comfortable with his explanation,” Kerry said.

For his part, Karzai said “today was a very good day,” citing the turnover of the detention facility at the U.S.-run Bagram military base north of Kabul.

The two spoke at a joint news conference during which Kerry also praised what he said was Afghanistan’s commitment to “safe, secure” and transparent elections, scheduled for April 2014.

During Kerry’s 24-hour visit to the country — his sixth since President Barack Obama became president but his first as Obama’s secretary of State — Kerry also planned to meet with civic leaders and others to discuss continued U.S. assistance to the country and how to wean it from such aid as the international military operation winds down, and upcoming national elections.

U.S. officials accompanying Kerry said he did not plan to lecture Karzai on his earlier rhetoric, which the U.S. had seen as jeopardizing progress in the war against extremism.

Kerry, who arrived in Kabul from Amman, Jordan, had hoped also to travel to Pakistan on his trip to the region but put it off due to elections there. Instead, he met late Sunday in Amman with Pakistani army chief for Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, officials said.

Monday night’s crash brought the total number of U.S. troops killed that day to seven, making it the deadliest day for U.S. forces so far this year. Two U.S. special operations forces were gunned down hours earlier in an insider attack by an Afghan policeman in eastern Afghanistan.

The NATO military coalition said in a statement that “initial reports” showed no enemy activity in the area at the time. The cause of the crash is under investigation, the statement said.

A U.S. official said all five of the dead were American. The official said the helicopter went down outside Kandahar city, the capital of Kandahar province. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the information had not been formally released.

It was the deadliest crash since August, when a U.S. military helicopter crashed during a firefight with insurgents in a remote area of Kandahar. Seven Americans and four Afghans died in that crash.

In March 2012, a helicopter crashed near the Afghan capital, Kabul, killing 12 Turkish soldiers on board and four Afghan civilians on the ground, officials said. And in August 2011, insurgents shot down a Chinook helicopter, killing 30 American troops, mostly elite Navy SEALs, in Wardak province in central Afghanistan.