Donors pledge $6.7 billion for Afghanistan

1.00pm

BERLIN - International donors pledged US$4.4 billion ($6.7 billion) for Afghanistan on Wednesday after President Hamid Karzai appealed for help to stop his country becoming a haven for drugs and terrorism.

One of the world's poorest countries and the biggest opium supplier, Afghanistan remains a key Western security concern two years after US-led forces overthrew the Taleban which had provided refuge for Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda guerrillas.

"This is 100 per cent of our target," Afghan Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai told a news conference at a meeting of over 50 donor nations in Berlin.

The pledge towards reconstruction and budget costs for the financial year 2004-2005 far outweighs the $4.5 billion over five years period pledged at a 2002 donors' conference in Tokyo, but is dwarfed by an estimated annual bill of $12 billion for the West's military operations in Afghanistan.

Ghani, clearly delighted stressed the aid would cut the West's military bill by contributing to Afghanistan's stability.

"We are not asking for charity, we are asking for investment," he told a news conference earlier. "When we are asking for assistance it is to actually save you money, not to make further claims on your constrained budgets."

Karzai's government says it needs $27.5 billion over seven years to build a state capable of supporting itself, although it had not expected this sum at the two-day Berlin conference.

Ghani said the international community had made a further promise of $8.2 billion over the next three years, short of Kabul's hoped-for $11.9 billion, but with the potential to rise.

He said the changing focus of aid pledges were testament to the progress made since the fall of the Taleban.

"When pledges were made in Tokyo at least half...were for humanitarian purposes," Ghani said. "The key focus of the current pledges is now on reconstruction, good governance and the political process. This marks a very important change."

Karzai earlier urged donors to help his country recover from the destruction of decades of war. "What we have achieved is very promising, but let me be frank and say that the reconstruction has only begun," he said.

But aid agencies and think-tanks say the West's commitment to Afghanistan has been lacklustre, and much of the aid it might have won has been diverted to postwar Iraq, which had received 10 times as much despite having roughly the same population.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell, in a speech to the conference, expressed hope that Afghanistan would never again harbour groups such as al Qaeda.

"Never again will tyrants and terrorists rule Afghanistan and never again will Afghanistan become a seedbed of instability," he said.

The United States said on Wednesday that the first of 2000 Marine reinforcements had arrived to intensify the hunt for fugitive militants and boost security ahead of elections delayed until September partly because of security concerns.

However, opium production in Afghanistan, almost eradicated under the Taleban in its last year in power, has since taken off and is reckoned to be worth about half the country's officially estimated gross domestic product of nearly $4 billion.

The country is believed to supply three-quarters of the world's opium. "Nobody wants to be called a drug dealer, especially not a whole nation," Karzai said.

- REUTERS