By Sayed Salahuddin
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan will seek greater control of billions in development funds at a major international meeting on Tuesday, promising in return to take on more responsibility for security as well as generate economic growth.
The ambitious pledges will be made at the Kabul Conference, where President Hamid Karzai will plead for more say in $13 billion (8.5 billion pounds) in international funding to use on programmes he hopes will boost economic growth and lure fighters from the insurgency.
With governments anxious to withdraw from the 150,000-strong NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) sooner than later, they are keen too for assurances the country won't slide back into the isolation that allowed al Qaeda to flourish and launch the September 11, 2001 attacks.
But the Taliban, treating any talk of withdrawal timetables as signs of weakness, have spurned any peace overtures and insist they will fight until all foreigners leave.
A tightly woven security blanket has been thrown over the city for the conference, Afghanistan's biggest in over three decades and attended by representatives from over 60 countries or international organisations, including U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
"We are 100 percent prepared but this doesn't mean everything will go exactly to plan," said Zemarai Bashary, spokesman for the Interior Ministry which runs the police force.
STREETS DESERTED
The streets of the capital were deserted on Monday as even foreign diplomats found themselves unable to pass through scores of checkpoints that mushroomed overnight.
The Taliban frequently target prestigious government events and last month attacked a national peace meeting being addressed by Karzai, leading to the resignations of the country's interior minister and intelligence chief.
Tuesday's gathering will hear the Afghan government present a grand vision that contains commitments to both its own people and the international community and divided into five areas: funding, governance and law, economic and social development, peace and reconciliation, security and international relations.
Some analysts and diplomats say the commitments are long on hope and short on details, but all agree they come at a crucial time for Afghanistan.
Highlights include:
- Asking donors to increase aid through government channels from the current 20 percent to 50, promising better accounting in return and stepped up prosecution of graft and corruption cases involving officials through special courts.
- Expanding the army to a strength of over 170,000 by October 2011, and the national police to 134,000 as well as the formation of a new local police force in insecure areas.
- Introducing a programme that aims to reintegrate up to 36,000 ex-combatants within five years.
- Increasing collection of domestic revenues to 9.4 pct of GDP by March next year.
Afghanistan's future is not only in its own hands. The bulk of the Taliban leadership have sanctuary in neighbouring Pakistan which has long treated its western neighbour as "strategic depth" in case of fresh conflict with India.
Washington, with most at stake in Afghanistan including two-thirds of the foreign troops and an expense sheet running past $345 billion, hopes agreements such as a truck transit trade deal signed between Islamabad and Kabul on Sunday will promote better ties.
Pakistan trucks are already allowed to pass through Afghanistan to markets in central Asia, but the new deal gives Afghan truckers the same access to India and its ports.
It is this sort of trade and commerce that Karzai hopes will create jobs and improve the lives of ordinary Afghans, who go to the polls in September for parliamentary elections.
The United Nations' top diplomat to the country said Afghanistan was ready to take upon more responsibility for its own affairs and he hoped the international community would recognise that at Tuesday's conference.
"It is a chicken and egg situation, but the chicken is saying 'we are ready to produce an egg'," Staffan de Mistura, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's special representative for Afghanistan, told Reuters in an interview.
(Editing by David Fox and Sugita Katyal)
