EU leaders promise to do more for Afghanistan
Source: Reuters
By Mark John BRUSSELS, Dec 15 (Reuters) - European Union leaders vowed on Friday to do more to help Afghanistan stamp out a stubborn insurgency and get back on its feet, citing plans to help in sectors from health to justice and policing. The bloc, which Washington wants to play a greater role in the country, said it had given some 4 billion euros ($5 billion) in aid since the U.S.-led invasion ousted its Taliban rulers in 2001 and was about to publish plans setting out further help in the period up to 2013. "The EU stands ready to intensify its efforts," EU leaders, some of whom have troops in NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), said in a draft of the declaration from the two-day summit. "Security and development in Afghanistan are mutually dependent," they stated, adding the bloc wanted to ensure development help reached all parts of the impoverished country. The leaders said they were interested in a French proposal to set up a "Contact Group" to help coordinate support for Afghanistan, but noted that another body is already liaising between nations and organisations involved, from NATO's 32,000-strong security mission to World Bank programmes. The draft reaffirmed a previous pledge to examine whether the EU should step up training of an Afghan police force widely accused of being corrupt. A suicide car attack killed at least five people in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, the latest deaths in the bloodiest year since the Taliban was overthrown. The EU sent a fact-finding team to Afghanistan last month to study a possible role in police training and justice reform after NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer called on it to take on such tasks. MILITARY NOT ENOUGH EU officials bristle at suggestions within the alliance that the bloc -- 19 of whose members are also in NATO -- could be doing more and point not only to the European troop presence but their longstanding reconstruction programme. Several EU members have troops in Afghanistan but some, including France, Germany and Italy, have said their contingents cannot be sent to the more dangerous parts of the country except in emergencies. Britain, the Netherlands and Denmark have troops deployed alongside Canadian forces in the dangerous south of the country, heartland of the Taliban, and want Afghans to see fast proof that their efforts are yielding results. The draft summit communique said the executive European Commission planned to continue reconstruction help in 2007-13 with support for rural development, the health sector and programmes to strengthen governance. "We have to realise that military means alone are not sufficient to stabilise the situation in Afghanistan," Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, whose country has some 300 soldiers in the south, told reporters. "It is necessary to enhance our reconstruction activities and here I see a strong role for the European Union," he said. France last month asked its NATO partners to look at setting up a contact group that would comprise all nations with forces in ISAF, including non-NATO members like New Zealand, countries in the region and international bodies. The summit communique said it followed the idea "with interest" but underlined that a body -- the Joint Coordination and Monitoring Board (JCMB) -- was already liaising between the various players on the ground. Further discussions on the French idea are expected early next year.
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