Rural West Point, and lunch would have to wait.

The feed truck backed away slowly, its late morning feeding of Knobbe Farm's 5,000 cattle interrupted by the line of police cars, ambulances, Secret Service sports utility vehicles, minivans and stretch limousines creeping down the feed lot's dirt road.

The caravan stopped and out stepped the reason for the delay — Hamid Karzai, president of Afghanistan, face of Central Asia's newborn democracy and, on Wednesday, the most high-profile tourist in all of Cuming County.

Karzai had already met with President Bush and greeted the mayor of West Point. He had been debriefed at Offutt Air Force Base and learned a little about central pivot irrigation from Harry Knobbe, the farm and feed yard's owner.

Later he would receive an honorary degree and a series of standing ovations at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, where he told the crowd that Nebraska is the state with the closest ties to Afghanistan.

Right now, he wanted to look at the cows.

Knobbe asked if he'd like to ride a horse. The West Point farmer said the president of Afghanistan looked around, as if he needed permission from one of the dozens of men wearing dark suits and guns.

"‘Then he said, ‘Yeah,'" Knobbe recalled Wednesday.

The short ride on Pretty, a quarter horse mare, may have been the only moment of spontaneity during Karzai's heavily scripted and heavily secured three-day trip to the United States.

He met Monday with Bush, a conversation that followed the Afghan president's criticism of possible mistreatment of U.S. military detainees and the Bush administration's criticism of Afghanistan's continued opium production.

The White House appearance gave him a reason to travel to Nebraska and visit old friend Tom Gouttierre, a nationally renowned Afghan expert and dean of UNO's international studies department.

Karzai also toured UNO's campus and posed for numerous photos with approximately 200 members of Omaha's Afghan-American community during the whirlwind day in the Cornhusker State.

The day was capped by Karzai's speech after he received the honorary degree, a key to the city of Omaha and numerous standing ovations from the crowd at UNO's Strauss Performing Arts Center.

Karzai told the crowd that his home country was a better place now than at any time since the Soviet Union invaded nearly three decades ago.

But the country's struggles are far from over, he said. Afghanistan needs continued U.S. and world support as it continues the daunting task of turning a country, once considered by international experts to be the worst place in the world, into a stable democracy.

"A plea — to remain with Afghanistan … until Afghanistan is able to stand on its own feet," he said.

Karzai thanked the Afghan Americans in the crowd for coming and hoped that their U.S.-educated children would one day help their homeland toward prosperity.

Khalil Amin, an Omaha grocery store owner, said Afghan Americans  reciprocated Karzai's fondness.

"There's been so many trials in the last 25 years," Amin said after the speech. "Now everybody is happy because (Karzai) is working hard to make Afghanistan what it used to be. Peaceful."

During the speech, the president of Afghanistan also praised Gouttierre and his Center for Afghanistan Studies, which has produced textbooks for school children and educated teachers during a three-decade relationship with the country.

"Nebraska has done for Afghanistan what no other state has done for Afghanistan," he said.

The farm tour Karzai and his  29-member delegation took earlier Wednesday was time well spent, said Raheem Yaseer, the assistant director for the Center for Afghanistan Studies.

Afghanistan's Minister of Agriculture sat across from two U.S. agriculture experts during the driving tour, asking them questions about irrigation systems, farm equipment and how they could apply U.S. farming practices in Afghanistan.

"It was like a class," Yaseer said.

The tour had added relevance because of Afghan farmers' continued reliance on poppy as their sole cash crop.

The opium seed is the country's largest export and a vexing problem for the Afghan government, especially since the Bush administration began to criticize Karzai's failure to end production recently.

The problem is there are few other crops farmers can profit from since they have no equipment and little modern farming knowledge, Yaseer said after the farm tour.

The Afghan president risks angering the vast majority of his constituency as well as the tribal leaders he's trying to coax into democracy if he destroys all the opium at once, Yaseer said.

Wednesday, Karzai told reporters that opium production was down 30 percent this year and that he expects to eliminate production entirely in five or six years.

If he is to succeed in the reconstruction of Afghanistan, Knobbe thinks that success will come by sheer force of will.

The West Point farmer and feed lot owner said he was impressed by Karzai's presence and his optimism Wednesday morning.

"‘It's always, ‘I'm certain on this.'" Knobbe said. "‘Not, ‘I hope.'

"‘I'm certain.'"

Reach Matthew Hansen at 473-7245 or mhansen@journalstar.com.