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US role in brokering Pak-Afghan trade deal highlighted

Posted on: Tue July 20, 2010

KABUL: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul Monday ahead of an international conference on the future of the war-torn country.

The politicians dined together after Clinton had flown into Kabul from Pakistan in the evening and met the new commander of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus.

Clinton congratulated Karzai on a major trade deal struck between Afghanistan and Pakistan while the Afghan president underlined the pivotal role of the US in nailing down the pact, which had been decades in the making.

The conference, starting on Tuesday, aims to chart a future of peace and development for Afghanistan and show supporters the country is acting on past pledges. An enormous amount of... preparation has been done by the Afghans. They have a good team working on it, Clinton said during her flight to Kabul. It s going to be very substantive and demonstrate more Afghan leadership.

The meeting is being billed as a bid by the Afghan government to follow a process of transition from dependence on Western backers to running the country alone and responsibly after tens of thousands of US-led Nato troops go home.

Karzai and UN chief Ban Ki-moon are to chair the conference, and Ban urged the Afghan leader to unveil concrete steps to improve governance and promote national reconciliation.

Clinton said all sides had a role to play in fighting corruption. We ve asked for steps to be taken. We also have to get a hard look at ourselves, she said. Our presence, all of our contracting, has fed this problem. It s an international issue. We have to do a better job in channeling our aid. Hailed as the biggest international gathering in the Afghan capital yet, Nato and Afghan security forces are enforcing a security clampdown to prevent Taliban attacks from marring the event. The conference has two major goals one is to demonstrate Afghan political will and a concrete programme of action, Ashraf Ghani, conference organiser and a former presidential candidate, told AFP.

 The second is to ask for realignment of the assistance so generously provided by the international community, to achieve our common objectives of a stable, secure and democratic Afghanistan. Up to 70 international representatives and 40 foreign ministers, led by Clinton, will attend the meeting.

Courtesy : The News