AFGHANISTAN - Mar 31 - Donors Pledge $4.4 Bn.

Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani announces at the end of an international meeting in Berlin donors have pledged to give Kabul $4.4 bn (3.6bn, [pounds sterling]2.4bn) this year and a total of $8.2 bn over the next three years. He says the commitment for 2004, which runs from March 2004 to March 2005, represents "100% of Afghanistan's target ahead of the conference". The additional $3.8 bn for 2005-06 only includes partial pledges by the US so more contributions are likely to be made later. The meeting's communique commits the international community to, where possible, making "multi-year (funding) commitments" to be channelled increasingly through the Afghan budget or through contributions to Afghan-run trust funds. (The FT on Apr 1 reported officials "close to the Afghan government" as saying it was particularly important that the US shift from single-year to the type of multi-year pledges that Washington has agreed with several Middle Eastern countries, in order to help plan reconstruction programmes. The declaration and the pledges represent a diplomatic victory for the Kabul government, which has lobbied hard for a longer-term financial commitment from donors. Earlier on Mar 31 Ghani presented the conference with a funding programme worth $28 bn over seven years, as it emerged that Germany and other countries had sought unsuccessfully before the conference to persuade the Afghan delegation to remove this figure from its demand. Germany, as host, was particularly concerned that the conference would appear a failure if the $28 bn figure was not reached, members of some delegations said. The $4.4 bn figure announced is more than double the annual aid flows in recent years, and is seen as a sign of increased assistance in the future. Western states spend $13 bn a year on military operations in Afghanistan, so a larger investment in reconstruction and in tackling drugs and warlords, would save military spending and economic assistance). Ghani adds: "I'm not here to play the aid game". Pres Karzai (prominent among the participants in Berlin), says the conference should create a "true partnership" between Kabul and the international community, to follow the agreement signed at a conference in Bonn in 2001. However, he says, he has to "share with you my fears that the goal of creating a stable...Afghanistan remain challenged". (The main problems concern security, booming poppy production and the slow pace in disarming militias). The communique also says Western powers would establish an unspecified number of provincial reconstruction teams (PRT) to support the NATO-led Isaf security forces outside Kabul. (Delegations from the Netherlands, Italy, Norway and Finland and Hungary had visited Kabul to assess the possibility of establishing PRTs. The donor powers in Berlin pledged to clamp down more intensively on poppy producers and traders. The Kabul government and its foreign allies have struggled to formulate a coherent policy for combating the opium industry, wary of using strong-arm tactics against a population with few economic alternatives. The US last month announced support for Afghan teams attached to the interior ministry in Kabul that aim to destroy poppy fields. The move stirred tensions with the British government, which formally has the lead role in helping Afghanistan tackle the drugs trade).