KABUL, Afghanistan — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday that she detected a subtle but favorable shift in public opinion in key ally Pakistan as she pressed Afghan leaders on policy and security improvements.
Arriving in Kabul to attend an international conference on Afghanistan after two days of talks in Islamabad, Clinton said she would urge Afghan President Hamid Karzai to follow through with pledges to improve governance and fight corruption. But she stressed that the U.S. and its partners had to police themselves in those areas too.
Aboard her plane from Pakistan, Clinton said U.S. efforts to convince deeply skeptical Pakistanis that American interest in their country extends beyond the fight against Islamist militants appeared to be gaining ground. To boost that shift, she announced a raft of new aid projects worth $500 million in Islamabad.
The projects, which include hospitals and new dams for badly needed electricity, are part of a $7.5 billion aid effort to win over Pakistanis suspicious about Washington’s goals there and in neighboring Afghanistan, where U.S. troops are being killed in ever greater numbers in an insurgency with roots in Pakistan.
After a town hall meeting with Pakistani students, academics and businessmen, Clinton said, she noticed a slight change in opinion from a her last trip to Pakistan in October when she was hit by a barrage of intense and hostile questions at a similar event.She said Pakistani officials she had spoken with had noticed it, too.
“I don’t want to overstate this, but [the Pakistani officials] all said we really believe that the people are understanding that the United States wants to be a real partner to us and that it’s not just killing terrorists,” she told reporters traveling with her to an international conference in Afghanistan.
“I happen to think one of the best ways to kill terrorists is by being a good partner and by creating an atmosphere in which people have trust and confidence that what you’re doing is in their best interests as well,” she said. “Therefore, they are prepared to support their own government in those efforts. I could feel a change.”
Clinton arrived in Kabul on Monday night to participate in a conference at which Karzai is to present concrete plans for improving governance, combating corruption, and beginning a peace process with both low-level Taliban fighters and their leaders.
Clinton was met at the airport by U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry and Gen. David Petraeus, the new U.S. and NATO commander, then was whisked to the U.S. Embassy compound a few miles away by helicopter, rather than risk a road convoy.
Clinton will spend less than 24 hours in Kabul. She met with Karzai on Monday night for dinner with their senior advisers and a one-on one session that lasted late into the evening.
A State Department official described their private talk as “deeply substantive” and said it included discussion of the gradual transition to Afghan security control as U.S. troops begin to depart in July 2011, reintegration of Taliban fighters and regional issues.
Karzai greeted Clinton in front of the presidential palace and thanked her for “getting us this very good transit agreement with Pakistan.” The long-negotiated accord, signed by the two governments Sunday in Islamabad after a strong U.S. push, regulates customs and permits, and allows Afghans and Pakistanis to transport goods within and through each other’s territory.
Clinton said on the plane to Afghanistan that she is concerned about reports of diversions of U.S. aid, but said the problem isn’t just with the Afghan government. She noted that recent reports of U.S. contractors paying protection money to militants have prompted concern in Congress and led one lawmaker to put a hold on about $4 billion in assistance to Afghanistan.
“We also have to take our hard look at ourselves because it is very clear our presence, all of our contracting, has fed that problem,” she said. “This is not just an Afghan problem, it’s an international issue. We have to do a better job of trying to more carefully channel and monitor our own aid.”
Clinton said the U.S. is “pressing the Afghan government at all levels to be more accountable, to go after corruption,” but that the U.S. also had a responsibility to improve management of its programs.
Today, the United States and European nations attending an international conference in Kabul are expected to endorse President Hamid Karzai’s plan for Afghan forces to take the lead on security throughout the country by 2014, according to Western officials and diplomats.
The timeline, which Karzai outlined last year, is nonbinding and essentially unenforceable.
The one-day conference will adopt a strategy that includes handing over security in all 34 provinces to the government by the end of 2014.
The delegates will endorse the goal of gradually turning over security to Afghan forces by the time Karzai leaves office at the end of 2014, according to a draft communique obtained by The Associated Press.
The Afghan government and the international community are expected to agree on a plan to decide which of the 34 provinces would be ready for Afghan control and when. The communique however makes no mention of international troop levels during the transition period.
If NATO follows the model used in Iraq, the coalition will likely keep substantial numbers of troops in Afghanistan through much of the transition to help train Afghan forces and to intervene if the Afghans cannot control security and prevent the Taliban from mounting a comeback in provinces cleared of major insurgent forces.
Although Obama said in December that U.S. troops would begin coming home in July 2011, he did not say how many troops would leave then. Critics complained that the date signaled to the Taliban that all they had to do was hold out until the Americans and their allies were gone.
In London, a senior British diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity because final details of the communique have not yet been finalized, said the conference would likely agree that the process of handing over control to Afghan forces would begin early next year.
The diplomat said a NATO conference in Lisbon in October would decide which areas would be handed over immediately. A conference working paper on security says that during the transition, NATO troops may “remain in the lead in specific districts” of provinces nominally under Afghan control.
Interactive
Speaking to reporters, Pakistan’s foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Quereshi, expressed skepticism that the Afghans will be ready to take over security by 2014, saying “in my personal assessment, it might take longer.”
“But again it depends on how quickly they are able to train their armed forces, their civilian law enforcement agencies, to take on the responsibility of security and protection of the ordinary Afghan citizen,” said Quereshi, whose government has longtime ties to insurgents. He said Pakistan was ready to help the Afghans achieve stability “because we feel that a stable, peaceful, prosperous Afghanistan is in Pakistan’s interest.”
Underscoring the security challenge, bombs killed six Afghan policemen in the biggest southern city of Kandahar and two American troops in the south, Afghan and U.S. officials said. The American deaths brought to 42 the number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan this month.
Clinton also warned Afghan officials against trying to make peace with Taliban, al-Qaida and other militants considered irreconcilable. Those re-entering society must lay down their arms and accept Afghanistan’s constitution, she said.
“We would strongly advise our friends in Afghanistan to deal with those who are committed to a peaceful future where their ideas can compete in the political arena through the ballot box, not through the force of arms,” Clinton said in Islamabad.
Many analysts believe Pakistan is reluctant to target Afghan Taliban militants in the country with whom it has historical ties because they could be useful allies in Afghanistan after international forces withdraw.
Pakistan has shown more interest in supporting Afghanistan’s push to reconcile with Afghan Taliban rather than fight them, a tactic the U.S. believes has little chance of succeeding until the militants’ momentum on the battlefield is reversed.
Information for this article was contributed by Matthew Lee, Robert H. Reid, Deb Riechmann, and Mirwais Khan of The Associated Press; by Nicole Gaouette, Eltaf Najafizada and James Rupert of Bloomberg News; by Karen De-Young of The Washington Post; and by Richard A. Oppel of The New York Times.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 07/20/2010