Listen Listen to President Hamid Karzai talking to Lyse Doucet (9 mins 3 secs)
The number of American soldiers killed in Afghanistan has risen to its highest annual figure since the US led invasion in 2001, after a US soldier was killed in a suicide attack in the east of the country on Thursday.
At least eight civilians were killed in the attack which took place at a market near Jalalabad.
It is just one of many indications that far from being defeated, the Taleban are gaining ground in Afghanistan.
Lyce Doucet has been talking to the Afghan President.
She began by asking him for his impression of the US President-elect Barack Obama.
First broadcast 13 November 2008
Click here to listen to Jill Mcgivering's reports from Helmand province in Afghanistan