By Xinhua,
Paris : French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner Saturday urged the international community to adopt a new approach in ongoing efforts to rebuild Afghanistan, lamenting that current efforts yielded little if any results.
Addressing the opening session of a conference attended by over40 non-governmental organizations in Paris, France’s chief diplomat was quoted as saying that “Afghans themselves must play a leading role” in the development of their country.
“Since 2001, international aid efforts have not fully yielded the desired results,” said Kouchner, referring to the year a United States-led coalition forces rooted out the Taliban from the capital Kabul.
In his remarks, the French foreign minister, who once worked as a doctor in Afghanistan called for an “Afghanization of international aid to involve all Afghans and ensure that it benefits each and every one of them” without elaborating further.
According to available figures, at the moment only 20 percent of financial aid to Afghanistan is managed by Kabul, which means that about 80 percent of the aid is spent by donors themselves, Homayoun Tandar, Afghan deputy national security advisor, told the one-day conference.
“If you asked me, Afghanization means taking into account the views and concerns of Afghan people and government projects and also transferring some of the funds to the Afghan government,” said the advisor.
The Paris conference is aimed at setting the stage for a donor meeting scheduled to be held in Paris on June 12 to raise funds to support international aid efforts in Afghanistan, where NATO-led forces are still battling a Taliban-inspired insurgency.
During the third in a series of donor conferences, the Afghan government is hoping to secure 50 billion U.S. dollars in pledges at the next month conference as part of efforts to finance a five-year development strategy.
“Only 15 out of the 25 billion dollars that was promised to the country during the previous two conferences had actually managed to trickle down to Kabul,” the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief (ACBAR) said in a recent report.
Seven years since the fall of the Taliban, a huge chunk of the Afghan people, and particularly outside the capital Kabul, remain desperately poor and aid groups have been complaining that undue focus has been placed on the ongoing military effort.
“We all know very well that a sustainable solution cannot be solely military,” said Kouchner, before adding that “let’s not play up security against development against security. The Afghan people are in need of both.”