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| Afghanistan/South Asia | |
| Berlin hosts key Afghan aid talks | |
| 2004-03-31 | |
| Officials from more than 50 nations are gathering for a conference to discuss development aid for Afghanistan. Afghan President Hamid Karzai is expected to ask the two-day meeting in Berlin for $27.5bn over seven years. But analysts say the amount pledged in will be much less - with Afghan officials admitting that they will be lucky to get even half of that sum. The UN has warned that Afghanistan is in danger of reverting to chaos unless it received sufficient foreign aid. Without it, the UN says that war-ravaged Afghanistan - one of the world's poorest countries - could become entirely dependent on the illegal drugs trade. Since the fall of the Taleban regime at the end of 2001, development has been slow, with insecurity making much of the south-east Afghanistan off-limits to the world community. The Berlin conference follows a first donor conference held in Japan in 2002 and will consider a report submitted by the Afghan government and institutions like the World Bank. Afghan leaders hope that one of their most convincing arguments in Berlin will be a simple comparison between how much it cost to secure Afghanistan and the price tag for rebuilding the country, the BBC's Crispin Thorold in Kabul says. Military and peacekeeping operations in the country cost the world community more than $13bn a year, he says, but for just under $28bn spread over seven years, the government in Kabul believes it could transform Afghanistan. That was the message President Karzai tried to convey during his talks with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in Berlin on Tuesday. "We have a plan for Afghanistan to take our country by the year 2014 to higher income per capita, a higher state of legitimacy, a direct democracy for our people and more stability and peace," President Karzai said after the meeting.
UN envoy to Afghanistan Jean Arnault said donors' pledges would depend on "what signal the country will send to the international community". Mr Arnault said that if Kabul's message was credible, the world would follow it. | |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #2 Fred Pruitt, nine more Americans died today. VISITORS PLEASE NOTE: Delete spaces in censored URL below. http://A DLU SA.com |
| Posted by: Free Speech Enforcer TROLL 2004-03-31 8:44:11 PM |
| #1 Jews lied to President Bush about WMD and now they say that he lied. BTW, Rantburg is a Zionist propaganda BBS that censors truth while Americans die in Iraq on basis of Jewish lies. |
| Posted by: James TROLL 2004-03-31 7:06:13 AM |