Japan presses Karzai for clean government

Japan confirmed its massive aid support to visiting Afghan President Hamid Karzai and reminded him of better governance.

TOKYO: Japan confirmed its massive aid support to visiting Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday but pointedly reminded him of the need for better governance in the corruption-riddled nation.

The world's second-biggest economy last year pledged up to five billion dollars by 2013 to rebuild the poor and war-torn country. Karzai -- on his first visit to Tokyo since he started his second term in November after a vote widely criticised for election irregularities -- thanked new Prime Minister Naoto Kan for Japan's solid support.

Kan told a joint press conference: "I pay sincere tribute to effort made by President Karzai... I said I hope the five billion dollars will be used to the benefit of the Afghan people and to achieve global peace."

According to a joint statement issued by the two leaders, "Prime Minister Kan requested firm efforts, including those for good governance, in order to have tax of Japanese nationals effectively utilised."

Japanese officials have made similar requests in the past for the country which anti-graft watchdog Transparency International says has the world's worst corruption except for Somalia, which lacks a functional government.

Karzai promised his host that the aid would be spent bringing development and stability in a way that would make Japan "feel fulfilled for the heart and resources that you've been spending in Afghanistan".

Of the aid Japan has pledged, about 980 million dollars have already been paid out, including more than 300 million dollars to cover the wages of Afghanistan's 80,000 police officers.

Japanese aid has built 650 kilometres (400 miles) of highway and a new Kabul airport terminal, and its city planners are working to redevelop the capital, where more than 100 Japanese buses are now providing public transport.

Other Japanese aid projects in the works are vocational training and small-scale rural aid projects that would help former Taliban foot-soldiers give up their arms and earn a living in civil society. For now, however -- nine years after US forces invaded the Central Asian country following the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States -- security remains the country's biggest challenge.

As Karzai visited Tokyo, news emerged of reported ransom demands for a Japanese journalist, Kosuke Tsuneoka, 40, who has been held captive by Taliban insurgents in northern Afghanistan since late March.

In Washington on Wednesday, US President Barack Obama's top military planners defended their exit strategy for Afghanistan, saying despite setbacks US troops could still begin withdrawing a little over a year from now.

General David Petraeus, commander of US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, repeated to senators his support for Obama's goal of transferring security duties to Afghan forces starting in July 2011.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates expressed confidence in Karzai and rejected reports an offensive was not going well in the south, after a week in which 28 Nato troops were killed in Taliban attacks.

Karzai was travelling with his foreign and finance ministers, as well as national security adviser Rangeen Dadfar Spanta. He had an audience with Emperor Akihito and met Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada. He planned to deliver a policy address on Friday before visiting the Hiroshima Peace Memorial on Saturday commemorating the victims of the US atomic bombing of the city at the end of World War II. On Sunday he will visit the nearby world heritage site of Nara -- another former capital that once marked the end of the Silk Road trade route which also ran through Afghanistan -- before leaving Japan.