KABUL: Afghan President Hamid Karzai, under fire from his international partners to clean up his administration, insisted Sunday there’s no place for corrupt officials within his government. Elsewhere, NATO officials said there was still no trace of two American paratroopers who went missing four days ago after trying to retrieve supplies from a river in western Afghanistan.

NATO forces said a US service member was killed Saturday in an insurgent attack in the west. The alliance said in a statement that the death was not related to the search for the missing paratroopers.

President Barack Obama and other international leaders have urged Karzai to crack down on corruption after he won Afghanistan’s fraud-marred election by default. Karzai was proclaimed the winner last week after his main challenger pulled out of a runoff, saying that he did not expect a fair vote.

“Individuals who are involved in corruption will have no place in the government,” Karzai said in an interview with the US Public Broadcasting Service. The presidential press office released comments from the interview.

Karzai also said donor countries share some of the responsibility for rampant corruption because of a poorly structured system to manage projects. The UN and some donor countries have also cited the need for a more efficient system to guarantee the money serves the Afghan people.

“There is no accountability of their contracts and there is a serious corruption in the implementation of those projects. And the responsibility for this corruption is the international community,” Karzai said. “I am hopeful that by joint cooperation we will be able to overcome all these challenges.” NATO forces said they were still searching for two American paratroopers who disappeared in the remote northwestern province of Badghis on Wednesday while trying to recover airdropped supplies that had fallen into a river. Local police said the two Americans were swept away by the river.

Fierce fighting with insurgents broke out during the search operation Friday, and NATO and Afghan forces are investigating whether a botched NATO airstrike was to blame for the death of seven Afghan soldiers and police and an Afghan interpreter during the rescue operation. 

In southern Afghanistan’s violence-wracked Helmand Province, a British soldier was killed in an explosion Saturday, Britain’s Defense Ministry said Sunday. Britain is the largest contributor to NATO forces in Afghanistan after the United States with about 9,000 troops in the country and 500 more committed by the government last month.

British politicians and military chiefs defended the war in Afghanistan on Sunday as Remembrance services for generations of war dead highlighted the cost of the increasingly unpopular conflict.

A new poll found further erosion in public support for the war amid mounting troop deaths, confusion over the mission and a lack of faith in its success – sparking renewed efforts to explain why Britain must stay the course.

“British public opinion has been dented by the level of losses that we have received, but we cannot run a campaign like this off the back of an opinion poll,” Defense Secretary Bob Ainsworth told Sky News television. “We have to persevere, we have to show some resolution.

“This campaign is directly connected to our safety back here in the United Kingdom. And people need to recognize that. Failure will be a disaster for us,” he added.   

Queen Elizabeth II led the Remembrance Sunday commemorations, which mark the end of World War I on November 11, 1918, and all those killed in other conflicts, laying a wreath at the Cenotaph memorial in central London.