The United Nations named a little-known Norwegian diplomat as its special envoy for Afghanistan yesterday, weeks after its preferred candidate, Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon, was rejected by President Hamid Karzai.

Kai Eide, a one-time UN envoy to the Balkans, was named yesterday to the new “super envoy” post which the international community is heavily relying on to help co-ordinate efforts to lift Afghanistan out of its backward slide into insecurity.

The job has been surrounded in controversy since Lord Ashdown emerged as the front-runner, only to be shot down by Mr Karzai, apparently over the former Royal Marine’s demands for far-reaching powers.

Mr Ashdow’s rejection was met with dismay in diplomatic circles, who argued that only such respected figure could wield the influence required to reverse Afghanistan’s current decline.

But Mr Karzai, an increasingly weak figurehead seen by many as a puppet of the West, balked at the prospect of such a powerful mandate being handed to a foreigner of Lord Ashdown’s stature.

Specifically there were concerns that he would seek a mandate along the lines of that he had as High Comissioner to Bosnia, potentially undermining Mr Karzai’s fragile leadership.

But his rejection of Mr Ashdown came amid a flurry of anti-Western, and specifically anti-British, remarks viewed by many as a bid to reassert his independence from his Western backers.

In the same week, he complained to reporters at the World Economic Forum in Davos that far from deterring the Taleban, the presence of British troops in Helmand had let them back in.

Lord Ashdown withdrew his candidacy as soon as Mr Karzai’s antipathy became clear, to the grave disappointment of many Nato leaders, particularly the United States, which had sought a heavywieght candidate to boost co-ordination of reconstructions efforts between the Nato military contigent and international aid groups.

Mr Eide was one of a handful of candidates left after Lord Ashdown’s withdrawal. John Manley, the former Canadian Deputy Prime Minister, had been regarded as another lead candidate, but he reportedly withdrew late last week, apparently spooked by Lord Ashdown’s experience.

Norway, as a member of Nato, has 500 troops serving in Afghanistan, but so far all have been deployed to the relatively peaceful north. The US, as the lead military force in Afghanistan, is leaning heavily on its Nato allies to deploy more troops to the far more restive south, where the Taleban insurgency has been gaining ground, and now controls more than 10 percent of the country’s territory.

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