Hamid Karzai, front row, second from left, waves to the audience during the ceremony in Kabul at which he took the oath of office as the first elected President of Afghanistan, on Dec. 7. (Photo: AFP)

KABUL : Hamid Karzai was sworn in as Afghanistan’s first popularly elected president on Dec. 7, three years after American-backed resistance fighters swept the Taliban government from power.

Karzai, who on Oct. 9 easily won election to a five-year term after serving as head of a transitional government, took the oath of office in a nationally televised ceremony on the presidential grounds before an audience of hundreds of Afghan ministers, tribal elders, political and military leaders and 150 foreign dignitaries, including Vice President Dick Cheney.

Karzai promised in his address to use his new mandate from the people to select an efficient, reform-minded cabinet that would not be constrained by powerful factional and ethnic interests, as his cabinets have been in the past. “We have now left a hard and dark past behind us, and today we areng a new chapter in our history, in a spirit of friendship with the international community,” Karzai said, speaking alternately in Pashto and Dari, the country’s two major languages, in his 15-minute speech.

Karzai won the majority of votes in the Oct. 9 election, having received over 4.2 million votes –– more than half of the estimated ballots cast. His nearest rival, the former education minister, Muhammad Yunus Qanooni, had 16.2 percent.

Among the other candidates, the Hazara Shia leader, Muhammad Mohaqeq, received 11.8 percent, and the Uzbek general, Abdul Rashid Dostum had 10.3 percent.

The only woman presidential candidate, Masooda Jalal, was running sixth, with 80,922 votes, or 1.1 percent.

In a sign of the event’s importance to the Bush administration, Cheney led an American delegation from Washington that included Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and one of President Bush’s most trusted advisers, Karen P. Hughes.