Rice pledges $1 billion in U.S. aid
Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
02/01/2006
LONDON -- The Bush administration said yesterday
it would ask Congress for more than $1 billion in next year's
budget to continue helping Afghanistan's security and reconstruction.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made the pledge
at a conference in London, where more than 70 countries and
organizations signed a pact to support Afghanistan's development
over the next five years.
"The transformation of Afghanistan is remarkable
but, of course, still incomplete, and it is essential that we
all increase our support for the Afghan people," Miss Rice
said.
"In addition to our current commitment of
nearly $6 billion, today, I'm proud to announce that President
Bush will ask our Congress for $1.1 billion in new assistance
to support the Afghan people in the next year."
Foreign aid accounted for about 90 percent of
Afghanistan's budget last year, and most of it came from the
United States, which has spent more than $10 billion since the
Taliban's fall in 2001.
Other nations at the conference promised to continue
their financial support, but only Britain offered a set amount,
pledging about $880 million in new aid over the next three years.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai thanked the donors
and said that their past contributions had helped improve the
lives of millions of Afghans.
International donors pledged $8.7 billion over
four years for Afghanistan's reconstruction at a 2004 conference
in Berlin, said Ashraf Haidari, first secretary of the Afghan
Embassy in Washington. Most countries have delivered on those
pledges, Mr. Haidari said.
He said officials in Kabul have expressed frustration
that the money was channeled not through the Afghan government
but through private aid groups and international contractors
and was "largely wasted."
"We were happy with the level of funding
but not with the way it was disbursed," Mr. Haidari said.
At a press conference in Kabul yesterday, former
Afghan Planning Minister Ramazan Bashardost called for sweeping
personnel changes in government and aid agencies.
"The people are asking themselves, 'If these
billions of dollars have been donated, which of our pains have
they remedied, what ointment has been put on our wounds?'?"
he said.
The Afghanistan Compact, the five-year blueprint
offered yesterday, was intended as a successor to a process
that began in Bonn in 2001 and led to presidential and parliamentary
elections and the adoption of a constitution.
Even as U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and
other participants in the London conference praised Afghanistan's
achievements, they demanded government action to address problems
with security, corruption, poverty and narcotics.
Last year was the deadliest in Afghanistan
since 2001, with about 1,600 people killed in militant violence,
including 91 U.S. troops. There have been 20 suicide bombings
in the past four months.
