Afghan government launches anti-corruption unit

Nov 16, 2009, 13:47 GMT

Kabul - Afghan government officials announced Monday the launch of an anti-corruption unit and a force to fight major crimes amid mounting international pressure on newly re-elected President Hamid Karzai to crack down on graft in his administration.

Since being declared president in a fraud-tainted election earlier this month, Karzai has been under pressure by Western leaders, who have tens of thousands soldiers in the country, to reform his administration or face the loss of international support.

'After his reelection, President Hamid Karzai has made the fight against corruption his top priority in the next five years,' Afghan Interior Minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar told a press conference in Kabul.

'Our previous efforts were useful, but did not root out the corruption and did not yield the results that our people expected. Therefore there have to be new experiences,' said Atmar, who was flanked by a host of Afghan officials and US and British ambassadors to Kabul.

The new anti-corruption unit, which will work under the purview of the country's attorney general, would prosecute corruption cases involving high-level government officials, Atmar said, adding, 'there will be no impunity for high-level officials before the law.'

The new unit would be supported by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Britain's Scotland Yard and the European Union's police training mission to Afghanistan. A separate force to fight major crimes would also be established, the minister said.

The announcement came hours after the European Union foreign ministers meeting in Brussels said on Monday that Karzai would have to clean up his country's notoriously corrupt authorities if he wanted to keep the confidence of international donors.

Karzai is due to be sworn in on Thursday.

'We will be watching. First we have his installation speech ... that will be very important, then we go from there and see how he appoints the different ministers,' Sweden's Foreign Minister Carl Bildt told journalists in Brussels.

Sweden currently holds the EU's rotating presidency.

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton also called for an independent inquiry into corruption among Afghan authorities in an interview with a German news magazine on Saturday.

'We have to demand more. It's in our national security interests to have partners in Afghanistan who feel committed to better governance,' she told Der Spiegel magazine.