KABUL, 7 September 2003 — US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will visit Afghanistan today, the US military said as Washington pledged to accelerate aid to rebuild the war-ravaged country.
Rumsfeld will meet President Hamid Karzai during his visit. He is currently visiting Iraq to assess security needs in the increasingly turbulent country. On his last visit to Afghanistan on May 1, Rumsfeld declared an end to major combat operations in the war-ravaged country, 18 months after US-led forces ousted the Taleban regime. Fighting against suspected Taleban militants, however, continues in the country.
Rumsfeld’s visit was announced as US Secretary of State Colin Powell pledged to speed up US aid to build a new state from the “ashes of war and chaos.” “We know that Afghanistan’s challenges are too great to be overcome overnight, but the United States is determined to help as long as it takes to overcome them,” Powell said in a major speech on Friday at George Washington University in the US capital.
Powell said the United States would “accelerate” its assistance to Afghanistan “in the next several weeks” in a reference to an expected $1 billion aid package likely to be unveiled around the second anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks which led to the toppling of the Taleban regime for harboring terrorist Osama Bin Laden. Afghan Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani in June said Afghanistan needed $30 billion in aid and investment over the next five years to escape poverty and deprivation.
Washington is aiming to bolster Karzai’s government before Afghan presidential elections next June, and is determined he will not pay a political price for a perceived delay in the benefits of his US-backed rule reaching ordinary Afghans.
