AFGHAN LEADERS PLEAD FOR INTERNATIONAL DONORS

BERLIN, March 31 -- Afghan leaders pleaded with international donors
Wednesday to provide a guaranteed stream of aid in the coming years to
bolster the country's fragile reconstruction and prevent it from
collapsing yet again into a failed state dominated by the drug trade.

"Nobody wants to be called a drug dealer, especially not a nation,"
President Hamid Karzai told ministers and senior officials gathered
here from more than 60 countries. He assured them that "in a few years
Afghanistan will not be a burden on your shoulders [but] will stand on
its own feet."

Afghanistan, the world's biggest producer of poppy-derived opium, is
already the most aid-dependent nation in the world, generating barely
five percent of its own revenue, according to United Nations
estimates. Afghan officials are seeking $27.5 billion over the next
seven years for reconstruction and development, or about $4 billion a
year, a doubling of its current aid budget. Afghan officials estimate
that this aid would raise the per capita annual income to $500 over
the next decade, moving the country from absolute poverty to what they
call "dignified poverty."

Pledges are expected to fall far short of those goals, however, with
officials here predicting that at best about $9 billion over the next
three years will be offered at the meeting. Many nations, including
the United States, are unable to make more than one-year commitments
because of legislative requirements. But Afghanistan, despite its
traumatic recent history, also has had trouble attracting adequate
funds from international donors.

United Nations officials struggled here to reach a goal of winning $80
million in commitments here to help procure equipment in time for
presidential and parliamentary elections set for September. The United
States offered about $20 million, and later increased its contribution
by another $5 million if more donations were made, but only $70
million had been raised thus far, said Mark Malloch Brown,
administrator of the United Nations Development Program.

"There are two scenarios," Brown said in an interview. "One is
Afghanistan can move stably forward to start building some real
sustainability and modest prosperity or it could lapse back into a
kind of narco terrorist state. That's the thing about Afghanistan.
Every statement about it can be countered by the opposite."

A January 2002 reconstruction conference in Tokyo raised about $4.5
billion, but according to Afghan figures little of that money has
actually reached the country. About $2 billion has been placed in bank
accounts for disbursement, with about $1.8 billion committed to
projects that have been started, though not much of that has been
spent yet in the country. Afghanistan also receives huge amounts of
basic humanitarian aid.

Japan announced it would contribute an additional $400 million over
the next two years. President Bush has requested $1.2 billion for
Afghanistan in the budget for the fiscal year starting in October,
after committing $2.1 billion in the 2004 fiscal year, with about $900
million aimed at reconstruction.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, representing the United States,
hailed what he called "extraordinary achievements for a nation that
has so recently emerged from more than two decades of war, misery,
chaos and oppression," including creating a constitution.

"Never again will tyrants and terrorists rule Afghanistan, and never
again will Afghanistan become a seedbed of instability," Powell told
the conference.

But other attendees here struck a more cautious note, saying security
is minimal in rural areas and Afghanistan is teetering on the edge.
"Progress has been made but there is so much pressure for success,"
Paul O'Brien, a Kabul-based policy advocacy coordinator for CARE. "We
are concerned about a premature march for victory, and that
Afghanistan will fall off the radar screens after the U.S. elections."

The International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based foreign-policy think
tank, warned in a report this week that the international community's
failure to extend security outside Kabul "is perpetuating, indeed
deepening, the political and economic power of regional commanders."
The report said that NATO still lacks troop commitments to deploy
enough reconstruction teams in rural regions.

Development officials "are very worried that we don't see yet
sufficient sign that these teams are getting out there in sufficient
force and sufficient vigor to signal to Afghans that there is really
going to be nationwide law and order," Malloch Brown said.