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Powell Leaves Kabul After Promising Karzai Support
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| Powell boosts
Karzai in Kabul |
KABUL, Jan. 17 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – Before leaving Kabul Thursday heading for Bagram airport, from where he is due to leave Afghanistan after a brief visit, U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, said the United States will do everything it can to help Afghanistan recover from two decades of wars.
Powell’s visit to Afghanistan is the first by a U.S. Secretary of State for a quarter of a century.
Powell spent half a day in the city to meet the interim government's leaders and reassure them of what he described as the United States’ long term support for the war-ravaged country.
He arrived in Kabul a day after the U.N. Security Council renewed sanctions against the Taliban but exempted the three-week-old interim Afghan administration, allowing the release of state assets frozen last year in an effort to force the Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden.
Speaking at a joint news conference in the Afghan capital with interim leader, Hamid Karzai, Powell said U.S. President George W. Bush "is committed to this cause for as long as it takes," BBC’s online news service reported Thursday, January 17, 2002.
Karzai said his government would be "very tough and rather oppressive" on corruption, to ensure that aid money would not go astray.
"Warlordism is over in Afghanistan," Karzai said.
Powell said he was "moved by the depth of his [Karzai's] commitment to make sure that corruption does not rear its ugly head again".
He said that access to Afghan assets frozen during what he termed as the war against terrorism was "moving along" and the United States would make a significant aid contribution in the next few days.
Work is still going on in Washington to decide how much to contribute when international donors meet in Tokyo next week for a conference on reconstruction, Powell added, according to BBC.
Two months after U.S. firepower ousted Taliban from power, Powell flew in under extremely tight security for a brief but historic visit.
He brought with him a reassuring message that was gratefully received by the country's interim government.
"We will be with you in this current crisis and in the future," Powell said after meeting interim president Hamid Karzai, reported AFP.
"We are committed to doing everything we can to assist you in this time of transition... so the Afghan people will be able to live in peace and security," he said.
Karzai, standing beside Powell at Kabul's presidential palace, welcomed the U.S. Defense Secretary with open arms and praised him for taking the "time to visit Afghanistan.”
Karzai, chosen at the Bonn conference to lead an interim administration to replace the Taliban, is Westernized and speaks English, Pashto and Persian fluently.
The Afghan leader said his people had questioned whether the United States would remain involved in the country even after the Taliban and Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network had been removed from the country, but that Powell's visit now allowed him to answer affirmatively.
The visit "shows to us the commitment of the United States of America... now I can tell them 'Yes', the United States is committed."
Karzai said he had told Powell of the extreme needs of his administration which is now in dire need of additional funds, and as if to demonstrate that point, joked that a power outage that hit the palace just as their joint news conference was to begin was intended as a demonstration of the problem.
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