KABUL, March 24: Afghan President Hamid Karzai will attend a conference in the Netherlands next week where the United States, the UN and Afghanistan’s neighbours, including possibly Iran, are to discuss ways to end the Afghan conflict.

Mr Karzai would also travel to the Turkish capital in early April, a spokesman for the Afghan president said on Tuesday, but declined to say whether the trip to Ankara would coincide with a visit there by US President Barack Obama on April 5-7.

The flurry of diplomatic activity comes as the United States is due to unveil its new strategy on Afghanistan and Pakistan that is expected to include a greater emphasis on economic assistance, more troops and a regional diplomatic approach.

President Obama has said the strategic review will contain an exit strategy. Most analysts see the only way out of Afghanistan for the West in the long-term is to build up the Afghan army and police to the point where they can take a greater security role.

Afghan officials declined to make specific comments on the new US strategy before it was officially announced. “We have yet to see the strategy so I don’t want to prejudge an outcome that we have not seen,” said Mr Karzai’s spokesman Humayun Hamidzada.

Afghanistan’s foreign minister travelled to the United States last month to give Kabul’s input into the review of policy since US-led forces toppled the Taliban for harbouring Al Qaeda leaders after the Sept 11, 2001 attacks.

“What were the lessons learned from the past seven years where we actually had success and where were our shortcomings? So it was a process where we had a contribution,” Mr Hamidzada said of the strategy review meeting.

President Asif Ali Zardari was also due to attend the Ankara meeting, diplomats said, part of a series of talks hosted by Turkey to try to bring the two often feuding US allies closer together to combat the Taliban insurgency that threatened both the neighbours.

Afghanistan is suffering its worst levels of violence since 2001, with Afghan forces and 70,000 international troops engaged in daily firefights with Taliban insurgents mainly in the south and east.

Some 5,000 people, including more than 2,100 civilians, were killed last year alone, a 40 per cent rise on 2007.—Reuters
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