Japan expresses support for Afghanistan, requests good governance

Jun 17, 2010, 14:09 GMT

Tokyo - Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan underscored his country's commitment to Afghanistan when he met Thursday with Afghan President Hamid Karzai but also urged the Afghan government to boost security and end corruption.

Kan told Karzai, who arrived in Tokyo late Wednesday for a five-day visit, that he would continue to support Afghanistan after Japan announced last year a pledge of 5 billion dollars by 2013 to help rebuild the worn-torn country.

In response, the president of the country that anti-graft watchdog Transparency International ranks as the second most corrupt in the world told Kan that the Afghan people 'will do their best' to effectively use the Japanese aid.

According to a joint statement issued by the two leaders, Karzai told Kan how his government is working to fight graft, improve its accountability and financial management, and increase its responsibility for reconstruction and development.

Soon after Kan's Democratic Party of Japan swept to power in September, Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada stressed Japan should focus on assistance to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Japan has not dispatched troops to Afghanistan, which could generate stiff opposition from the Japanese public because such overseas military deployments are seen as a violation of the nation's war-renouncing constitution.

Japan, however, has been among the major donors for Afghanistan, funding projects that include education and health programmes, infrastructure construction, rural development and measures to disarm and reintegrate former Taliban soldiers.

The latest 5-billion-dollar package is to help the Afghan government pay about half the wages of its 80,000 police officers and fund agricultural and rural development as well as vocational training to former soldiers.

Moreover, Japan is ready to offer 50 million dollars from the package to promote reconciliation in Afghanistan, government officials were quoted by the Kyodo News agency as saying.

Karzai has made reconciliation with and reintegration of the Taliban a priority in his second term of office and held a peace jirga this month to begin the process.

Earlier Thursday, Karzai met Emperor Akihito and held talks with Okada.

Karzai is to travel to western Japan, stopping at Nara, Kyoto and Hiroshima to visit the Peace Memorial Park, commemorating the 1945 US atomic bombing.