CONFERENCE YIELDS PLAN FOR MASSIVE AID TO REBUILD AFGHANISTAN
Major donors launched an extensive aid plan for Afghanistan on Thursday, saying it could grow into funding worth billions of dollars if the country's new government keeps peace among rival ethnic groups, the Los Angeles Times (p. A17), CNN.com and Reuters report. A two-day conference in Brussels led by the EU, Japan, Saudi Arabia and the United States assessed how to coordinate aid needed to rebuild the impoverished nation. A US official said the lure of massive aid to rebuild infrastructure, boost the crippled agricultural sector and reinvent public institutions was an incentive for Afghan warlords to set aside weapons and back the interim Cabinet. "We need this opportunity to warn armed factions and some of the militias that they must back the new government or we cannot do our reconstruction," said Andrew Natsios, chief administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
The conference agreed to create an initial $20 million fund for Afghanistan's new administration, which is to take office on Saturday and rule for six months.Also reporting, AFP says the World Bank, the UN Development Program and the Asian Development Bank estimate the reconstruction of war-torn Afghanistan will cost between $2 billion and $3 billion over the next 30 months. Pledges to fund the cost will be made at an Afghan donors conference in Tokyo next month. Included in the estimate was the cost of getting some 1.5 million Afghan children back to school in the next two years. Over the next six months, some 100,000 "work-for-food" jobs would be created and some 15,000 households would get running water, spokesmen for the three groups said. Separately, the Wall Street Journal and Wall Street Journal Europe (p. 2) report British marines began arriving in Kabul, the first wave of an international peacekeeping force designed to restore stability to post-Taliban Afghanistan. The troops, initially numbering about 200, are meant to enhance security ahead of the swearing in of a transitional government on Saturday. But they landed in a country still beset by violence as local warlords and their private armies loot humanitarian-aid convoys and rob and kill people traveling between major cities. A Western official said the British commandos would be deployed on the streets of the capital to help reassure the population that "better times are ahead." He called the deployment a "gesture of solidarity with the new government." The UN Security Council yesterday adopted a resolution authorizing the British-led stabilization force of 3,000 to 5,000 troops to provide security to the Kabul area for the next six months.