KABUL, 18 March 2004 — US Secretary of State Colin Powell held talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai on a daylong visit here yesterday, after urging Afghan women to vote in this year’s elections, pledging long-term US commitment and praising Pakistan for stepping up its Al-Qaeda hunt.
Powell flew into Kabul from India on a US military plane on the second leg of his latest South Asia tour and his second visit to Afghanistan since January 2002.
Heavy cordons of armed Afghan soldiers and police and contingents of US Marines lined the war-torn capital’s streets as Powell’s motorcade whizzed him to a voter registration center in a girls’ high school.
“It’s particularly impressive to see women coming out, women coming out in numbers,” Powell told reporters after watching women line up to register.
He encouraged them to exercise their right to vote in the country’s first post-Taleban presidential and parliamentary elections, slated for June. “This is an exercise in democracy,” he declared.
Authorities are eager to urge women to enroll on voters’ lists as women account for only 28 percent of the 1.5 million Afghans who have registered so far.
Powell said in some areas the female voter registration rate was as high as 43 percent. “It’s been growing over time,” he said.
Karzai echoed the concern of many observers when he told a joint press conference with Powell that polls may be delayed.
Powell used the trip to announce a doubling of US aid to Afghanistan for 2004. He said Washington will pledge an extra $1 billion at the upcoming donors’ conference in Berlin.
“So this year it will be $2.2 billion.”
Noting “lots of progress” in Kabul in the two years since his last visit, Powell stressed that the US remained committed to Afghanistan for the long-term.
“The United States is in this for the long haul. They (the Afghans) don’t have to hope we will be here. We will be here.”
