Karzai to discuss aid, security
Meeting with Japan PM:
JAPAN: Afghan President Hamid Karzai was to meet the leaders
of Japan, a major aid donor, for talks Thursday on improving security
and fighting corruption in his war-torn country.
Japan was expected to stress that it wants to see better governance
and less graft in the bitterly poor central Asian nation as it disburses
aid from a massive pledge of five billion dollars until 2013.
New Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who took office last week, was to
discuss with Karzai the security situation in his country, where US-led
forces have battled Taliban insurgents since late 2001.
In Washington on Wednesday, US President Barack Obama’s top military
planners defended their exit strategy for Afghanistan, saying despite
setbacks US troops could still begin withdrawing a little over a year
from now.
General David Petraeus, commander of US troops in Iraq and
Afghanistan, repeated to senators his support for Obama’s goal of
transferring security duties to Afghan forces starting in July 2011.
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates expressed confidence in Karzai and
rejected reports an offensive was not going well in the south, after a
week in which 28 NATO troops were killed in Taliban attacks.
The leaders of Japan and Afghanistan were also expected to discuss
the fate of a Japanese journalist, Kosuke Tsuneoka, 40, who has been
held captive by Taliban insurgents in northern Afghanistan since late
March.
Karzai had an audience with Emperor Akihito in the morning and was
later due to meet Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada and then Kan, with whom
he was due to give a brief joint press conference.
The Afghan leader’s trip, his fourth to Japan, is his first since he
won his second presidential term last November in a vote that was widely
criticised as marred by electoral irregularities.
Japanese foreign ministry press secretary Kazuo Kodama told AFP that
while Tokyo had sympathy for the challenges facing Karzai, the quality
of governance in Afghanistan had to be improved.
Watchdog Transparency International says Afghanistan has the worst
corruption of any country except Somalia, which has no functional
government.
Tokyo, Thursday, AFP |
