0kci Afghanistan to need Western help for up to 15
Karzai said Afghanistan did not want to be a burden on its allies but needed five years before it could take charge.
“In London we are talking about nothing less than setting the future course, a course that I am convinced will determine the success or failure of our mission,” Merkel said Wednesday.
Military officers have said they hoped the extra muscle could weaken the Taliban into accepting a peace deal.
“There is new momentum in this mission and it is gathering pace. The London conference will give it another boost,” wrote Rasmussen.
“To weaken the Taliban, you divide them and you offer those people who are prepared to renounce violence… a way out. And that is something that we will do and something that president Karzai wants to do,” Brown said.
Afghanistan to need Western help for up to 15yrs: Karzai
Afghanistan will need support from the West for up to 15 years, President Hamid Karzai warned Thursday ahead of a major international conference on his strife-torn country in London.
“With regard to training and equipping the Afghan security forces, five to 10 years will be enough,” Karzai said in an interview with BBC radio.
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen warned leaders Thursday that the “effort and sacrifice” of foreign soldiers “will not be enough to turn the corner in Afghanistan.”
Afghanistan’s allies are looking to step up reconstruction and development aid, but are expected to press Karzai to clamp down on rampant corruption that has sapped efforts to date and to implement needed reforms.
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Thursday’s meeting is expected to also push for Afghans to assume security responsibilities. Karzai, meeting students with Brown at Downing Street, reiterated that such an offer would only be made to Taliban who are not members of the Al-Qaeda network. Writing in the British newspaper the Times he said: “It will have to be matched by a clear political ‘road map’. The London conference will help to set that out.” But the Taliban has publicly rebuffed negotiations and reiterated in an emailed statement Wednesday a demand for “invading forces” — its term for foreign troops — to withdraw as a condition for any talks. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown also voiced support for the plan which he said could “detach” moderate Taliban from those who are “violently committed” to the movement’s hardline Islamic ideology. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the conference was vital to determining the success or failure of the mission in Afghanistan. The plan is also reported to have gained support from Japan and the United States although US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, emphasised in London that Al-Qaeda would have to be excluded. He called for clear Afghan plans to improve governance, a more focused civilian effort, and a substantially stronger military mission. Karzai has been lobbying for contributions to a 500-million-dollar reintegration programme that will offer Taliban jobs and security guarantees if they stop fighting. She has announced 500 more German troops for Afghanistan, a doubling of development aid and plans to offer 50 million euros (70 million US dollars) over five years to a new fund to draw militants back into mainstream society. The reconciliation push and UN’s removal of five Taliban from a sanctions list are seen as confidence-building measures for eventual peace talks, a diplomat said, with Karzai previously holding out the possibility of government posts for Taliban who lay down their weapons. Karzai will address about 70 countries and organisations that give vital support to his government in talks that some partners have said will be crucial but the Taliban has dismissed as a waste of time. “The London conference is in fact aimed at extending the invasion of Afghanistan by occupying forces… (It) is just a waste of time,” it said. There are around 110,000 international soldiers in Afghanistan; the United States has pledged 30,000 more troops this year, ahead of plans to drawdown from 2011, and has asked its allies for 10,000 extra soldiers. “With regard to sustaining them until Afghanistan is financially able to provide for our forces, the time will be extended to 10 to 15 years.” “We will be trying our very best to be ready to defend the major part of our country from two to three years and when we reach the five-year end point, that’s when we would be leading,” Karzai said Wednesday. The London meeting comes amid disquiet about the situation in Afghanistan more than eight years into a gruelling fight against the Taliban that has cost thousands of lives and is losing public support in several nations. Afghanistan will seek to drum up support for its plan to buy off Taliban militants at a meeting Thursday with its allies, who are expected to press Kabul to move more quickly to take over security. |
Rhmv Aicon Gallery Presents Home and the World Pho
They examine what is at stake in trying to document a country which has quickly moved from independence to being a nascent superpower; where different groups clamor for their own self-determination and the forces of globalization bring both welcome and unwelcome change.
Exhibition runs from January 28th 2010 to February 27th 2010
Aicon Gallery Presents Home and the World Photography Exhibition
The exhibition takes Rabrindranath Tagore’s novel ‘Home and the World’ (Ghare Baire) and Satyajit Ray’s film as its starting point and examines the ways in which artists in India have used photography to capture the state of affairs unfurling in concentric circles from within their most immediate space, and moving outward to the shared environments of the nation and the region.