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By Jethro Mullen and Brian Walker, CNN

updated 9:10 AM EDT, Mon September 29, 2014

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

(CNN) -- Ashraf Ghani was sworn in Monday as Afghanistan's President, sealing the country's first peaceful democratic transition of power.

Ghani, a former finance minister, takes office after signing a power-sharing deal last week with his rival presidential candidate, Abdullah Abdullah.

He succeeds Hamid Karzai, who experienced a rocky relationship with the United States during his 13 years in power that began after the fall of the Taliban.

A reminder of the challenges facing Ghani and Afghanistan came a few miles away from the presidential palace in Kabul: A suicide bomber targeting a police checkpoint killed four police officers and three civilians Monday morning, said Sediq Sediqqi, a spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry.

Elsewhere in Afghanistan, three suicide bombers killed four Afghan police officers Monday at a district police headquarters in the eastern Paktia province, Sediqqi said.

Ghani and Abdullah had been locked in a lengthy dispute amid accusations of voting fraud and manipulation, raising fears of increased instability in the fragile, war-torn country.

Under the agreement, Abdullah, a former foreign minister who later became a vocal critic of Karzai's, will take a newly created position of chief executive officer, which will have similar functions to a prime minister.

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Afghanistan's President sworn in