BRUSSELS, March 17 (IslamOnline.net & News
Agencies) - With the world attention being riveted on the looming
U.S.-led war on Iraq, the Afghani government urged the international
community not to forget their country.
Opening a one-day conference of donor states here,
Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani, presenting his 2003 budget, told the
conference that Afghanistan would need 15-20 billion dollars over the
next five years to overcome the past two decades' chaos, Agence
France-Presse (AFP) said.
Reconstruction Minister Amin Farhang said he hoped
the international community would not forget its promises made after the
fall of the Taliban regime and Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network in
late 2001.
Asked whether the Iraq crisis would deflect global
attention, Farhang told AFP: "The risk is there but I believe that the
international community knows also that Afghanistan is very, very
important.
"We cannot abandon Afghanistan and we cannot leave
the ground once again free for international terrorism," he said.
The United States, for its part, vowed not to
abandon Afghanistan in any war against Iraq as it pledged a further $820
million to help rebuild the shattered country.
U.S. Undersecretary of State for Economic, Business
and Agricultural Affairs Alan Larson pledged the new money for the 2003
fiscal year, in addition to $569 million signed over by Washington last
year.
"President (George W.) Bush and our government have
made clear our long-term commitment to reconstruction in Afghanistan and
the fact that we are in for the long haul," he told reporters.
"We believe that it is very important for all of us
to work for a revival of an Afghan nation that is prosperous, that's
independent and that will never again be a haven for international
terrorism," he said.
EU Pledges Fresh Aid
The European Union also pledged renewed backing for
Afghanistan.
External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten was to
sign over to Afghanistan 400 million euros ($430 million) in fresh EU
aid.
But concern is intensifying that international
commitment has already slipped and that the rebuilding of a post-war
Iraq will absorb whatever aid funds are available.
In a reference to Iraq, Patten voiced his concerns
to the conference delegates that unless the world could deliver on its
promises to Afghanistan, "our ambitions elsewhere will be torn to
shreds, I fear".
The Brussels meeting is the latest international
initiative to address the rebuilding of the Central Asian state after a
donors' conference in Tokyo in January 2002 pledged $4.5 billion over
five years.
The conference has drawn more than 150 delegates
from about 60 countries and organisations, including Afghanistan's
neighbours and the World Bank.
"If we do not stay the course with Afghanistan,
with whom will we stay that course?" the World Bank's South Asia vice
president, Mieko Nishimizu, told the conference.
Meanwhile, World Bank president James Wolfensohn
said opium production in Afghanistan was now within 10 percent of its
peak before it was banned by the Taliban in 1999, threatening afresh to
flood Western streets with heroin.
"While there is shooting it gets headlines, but
when it gets to issues of reconstruction the television crews leave and
go to the next spot," Wolfensohn said in an interview with Britain's
Observer newspaper on Sunday, March 16.
"There's less publicity and it goes off the radar
screen and so the second fundraising is always less good than the first
one. In the case of Afghanistan, we're in that decline period," he said.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai appealed last week
for the world to transform Afghanistan from "ground zero" by quadrupling
the Tokyo aid package.
He said Afghanistan would need up to 20 billion
dollars to combat terrorism and drugs production, which remain
ever-present threats given that Karzai's authority and the mandate of
international peacekeepers are both pretty much confined to Kabul.
