U.S.'s Rice seeks regional help for Afghanistan

RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany (Reuters) - Stabilizing Afghanistan will require regional help with political and economic support from countries like India, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Friday.

U.S. ties with India should flourish now a nuclear pact between the two countries has been approved, Rice said, adding that Afghanistan, where violence has risen over the past two years, was one of the areas where cooperation could expand.

"Afghanistan in the future is going to have to be regionally integrated in order to be successful economically," Rice said, speaking to reporters on her plane before it stopped to refuel in Germany on the way to New Delhi to mark the clinching of the nuclear trade deal.

India already had significant investments in Afghanistan and was contributing to its stability, she said.

But there should be a "regional integration strategy" of closer economic ties between Afghanistan and Central Asian states such as Kazakhstan -- where Rice will also visit this weekend -- as well as Pakistan and India, she said.

"I would emphasise the political and economic support for Afghanistan, and that's a discussion I would hope to have in Kazakhstan as well," she said.

In recent months, Afghanistan has become a deadlier place for U.S. troops than Iraq, and U.S. officials have warned that time is running out to muster the massive development effort necessary to stabilise the country.

The Bush administration is conducting a review of the war in Afghanistan, encompassing a range of government bodies including the Defence, State, Treasury and Agriculture departments.

The U.S.-India nuclear trade deal, which Congress approved earlier this week, was "symbolic of a relationship with India that is now at a very, very different level," Rice said.

"At that different level, one would expect that economic relations, defence relations, a whole range of relationships, including business relationships, will flourish, but they will flourish on their own terms," she said.

BILATERAL COOPERATION

The United States and India were already discussing military sales, and they should also boost cooperation in economic, educational, and agricultural programmes and humanitarian aid to other countries, Rice said.

The nuclear deal, which was a top foreign policy priority of the Bush administration, overturned a three-decade U.S. ban on nuclear trade with India. It is expected to unleash billions of dollars of investment and draw the world's biggest democracy closer to the West.

Rice, who is scheduled to arrive on Saturday in India for her talks with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and other officials, was unclear as to whether she would actually sign the nuclear trade deal while there, saying there were some unspecified "administrative" details to be worked out.

She said India had produced a letter of intent with "a firm set of commitments" regarding legal liability and a framework for U.S. companies that would do business in India.

Critics say the nuclear pact damages global efforts to contain the spread of nuclear weapons, by letting India import nuclear fuel and technology even though it has tested nuclear weapons and never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

U.S. critics of the deal said there was nothing in it to prevent India, which last detonated a nuclear device in 1998, from resuming nuclear testing. But Rice suggested that during her one-day visit she did not need to repeat U.S. warnings against such tests.

"I think we've been very clear about U.S. views on this issue," she said.

The accord opens up a market worth billions to U.S. companies such as General Electric and Westinghouse Electric, a unit of Japan's Toshiba Corp. But there is global competition with France's Areva, General Electric, Japan's Hitachi Ltd and Russia's atomic energy agency Rosatom.

"I'm confident that American companies will compete. We are free traders," Rice said.

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