(WASHINGTON) - Afghanistan's national army will take over the security of Kabul as scheduled this autumn despite a brazen attack by suspected Taliban militants at the heart of the Afghan capital, the special UN envoy to the insurgency-wracked nation said Monday.

"The ANA (Afghan National Army) takeover of Kabul is supposed to happen in autumn this year and I expect that to take place according to the schedule they have outlined," said envoy Kai Eide of Norway, who took over about a month ago.

The training of the national army, numbering more than 64,000 soldiers and scheduled to grow to 80,000 by the end of this year, was "not going badly at all" ahead of shouldering its new responsibility, he said.

The upcoming takeover "is an important step in the right direction," Eide said at a Washington forum when asked whether Sunday's attack at a top military parade in central Kabul -- seen also as an assassination attempt on Afghan President Hamid Karzai -- had cast doubt on the Afghans' role in assuming security responsibility.

The New York Times on Monday described the attack as "a moment of national embarrassment" for the Karzai government, which had been pressing to take over responsibility for Kabul's security from foreign troops.

The insurgent Taliban movement said it carried out the attack, in which three Afghans were killed, to show it had the power to strike even the nation's biggest annual military parade.

The event was supposed to showcase the Afghan army's growing strength after getting new training and equipment, mainly from the United States.

The UN Security Council, which last month unanimously agreed to extend the mandate of the UN mission in Afghanistan known as UNAMA until March 2009, on Monday strongly condemned the raid and stressed the need to bring those behind "this reprehensible act of terrorism" to justice.

Eide said while the attack underscored the fragile security situation in Afghanistan, where some 70,000 international soldiers from around 40 countries are serving, "the security situation is not worsening" as claimed by some groups.

"For those who say that the security situation is constantly becoming more difficult, I dont think (so). ... The major part of the country is relatively stable," he said.

Some groups suspected local security forces might have been linked to the attack, as has been suggested in the previous most dramatic attack in Kabul -- the Taliban's storming of a five-star hotel in January.

Eide, a former ambassador to NATO, had left the hotel seconds before the January attack, carried out by men in police uniform which left at least eight people dead, including three foreign nationals.

Following recent peace talks between Afghanistan's neighbor Pakistan and Taliban fighters, Eide said any such reconciliation in Afghanistan should not compromise freedom and security.

The reconciliation process, which must be politically driven, "cannot be a replacement for military engagement but must be based on the position of strength," he said. "The two must go hand-in-hand."

The UN envoy also said he had received commitments from European nations to pools their resources to help bolster the Afghan police force.

"I think there is a growing recognition in European Union member states that there is a need for a greater EU involvement in that effort," he said.

The 40-nation International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan led by NATO has around 43,000 soldiers battling insurgents led by the Taliban, who were ousted by US-led forces in late 2001.

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