International donors have pledged nearly €2 billion to help rebuild Afghanistan.
"The response has been extremely generous. Ninety percent of what we asked for has been committed to," Afghan Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani said after a one-day meeting here of about 60 donor countries and organisations.
The bulk of the €1.69 billion pledged for this budget year, ending in March 2004, will come from the United States (€771 million). The European Union promised €400 million.
Mr Alan Larson, the US undersecretary of state for economic, business and agricultural affairs, said Washington was committed to Afghanistan "for the long haul".
"We believe that it is very important for all of us to work for a revival of an Afghan nation that is prosperous, that's independent and that will never again be a haven for international terrorism," he told reporters.
The money compares to €1.5 billion pledged for Afghanistan last year, part of a €4.2 billion, five-year package secured at a major conference of donors in Tokyo in January 2002.
But concern is intensifying that commitment to Afghanistan is slipping. The EU believes enough stability has returned to the country to warrant the repatriation of 1,500 refugees a month from EU countries from April.
But, aid groups warn, security remains far from assured outside Kabul, where Mr Karzai's authority largely stops and to where international peacekeepers are confined.
And the World Bank says that opium production in Afghanistan is now within 10 per cent of its peak before it was banned by the Taliban in 1999, threatening to flood Western streets afresh with heroin.
AFP