Pubdate: Wed, 01 Feb 2006
Source: Press of Atlantic City, The (NJ)
Copyright: 2006 South Jersey Publishing Co.
Contact:  http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/29
Author: Beth Gardiner, Associated Press
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)

WORLD PLEDGES $10.5B FOR AFGHANISTAN AID

LONDON  - Nearly 70 nations and international bodies pledged $10.5 
billion to help Afghanistan fight poverty, improve security and crack 
down on the drug trade, officials said Wednesday at the end of a 
two-day conference on the nation's future.

The pledges were intended to fund the goals set out in a five-year 
plan delegates signed Tuesday for redevelopment in Afghanistan, which 
has been torn by decades of war.

"We've laid the foundation for change," British Foreign Office 
minister Kim Howells said in announcing the funding promises. "This 
money will provide the necessary basis for getting Afghanistan's work 
under way."

Dubbed the "Afghanistan Compact," the five-year plan covers poverty 
reduction, economic development, counternarcotics efforts and 
security, and promises aid to help President Hamid Karzai's 
government achieve the targets.

"I'm very thankful and I'm very confident that with this kind of 
support ... we will eventually be able to establish a very democratic 
society in Afghanistan," said Anwar ul-Haq Ahadi, the country's 
finance minister.

Diplomats at the conference praised the progress Afghanistan has made 
since a U.S.-led coalition toppled the hard-line Taliban regime in 
2001. But after decades of war and the Taliban's brutal rule, the 
country is still plagued by violence and extreme poverty, and they 
acknowledged it has a long way to go.

Ameerah Haq, of the United Nations mission in Afghanistan, said it 
was crucial that those building the country's future return home and 
put the new blueprint into action.

"The clock of the Afghanistan Compact is now ticking," she said.

The conference focused Wednesday on boosting human rights and 
economic development.

Afghanistan pledged in the new plan to build a functioning justice 
system in all its provinces by 2010 and reduce the number of people 
living on less than $1 a day by 3 percent per year.

Howells said establishing the rule of law would be critical.

"Without this, reconstruction, economic growth, poverty reduction and 
counternarcotics will continue to be hampered," he said. "It's very 
important that the protection of human rights becomes part of the 
mainstream of Afghan politics."

Howells said $77 million of the money pledged would go to fight drug 
production and trafficking. Afghanistan produces nearly 90 percent of 
the world's opium and heroin.

"We need to stop this evil trade which affects us all," he said.

Hedayat Amin Arsala, Afghanistan's commerce minister and a senior 
government adviser, said changing the country's political culture 
would be difficult.

"This is not a simple task," he said. "There is a whole generation of 
Afghans who have grown up seeing political causes advanced" through 
violence instead of democratic processes.

Delegates pledged to keep aid to Afghanistan flowing.

Prime Minister Tony Blair said that "at this moment when terrorism is 
fighting back in Afghanistan and in Iraq," helping to stabilize both 
countries was crucial to global security.

"Because when they were left in that failed state they were a threat 
to the whole of the world," he told the House of Commons in his 
weekly question session.

The five-year blueprint signed by the leaders at the conference is 
intended as a successor to the deal reached at a December 2001 
meeting in Bonn, Germany, that established a political process for 
Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban.

Afghanistan promised in the new compact to build a professional army 
and police force, shut down all armed militias by the end of 2007 and 
teach its officials about human rights.

It also vowed to provide electricity to 25 percent of rural homes and 
65 percent of urban ones by 2010, repair roads and set up a system of 
land registration. It also said it would reduce infant and maternal 
mortality rates that are among the worst in the world by 20 percent 
and 15 percent respectively by 2010.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman