BRUSSELS, Jan 25: The United States plans to increase its aid to insurgency-hit Afghanistan by $10.6 billion over the next two years, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced on Thursday.

“The challenges of the last several months have demonstrated that we want to and we should redouble our efforts” in Afghanistan, Ms Rice said. She told reporters accompanying her to a Nato meeting in Brussels that $8.6 billion of the aid would be for training and equipment for Afghan security forces and $2 billion for reconstruction.

It comes amid growing fears that the Taliban, backed by Al-Qaeda fighters and drug runners, will mount a new offensive against Nato-led troops in coming months as warmer weather returns.

A senior US official called the new aid “a very significant increase” over previous aid, which since 2001 has totalled $14.2 billion. The official said that the $8.6 billion package will in part finance an increase in the Afghan army by 70,000 soldiers and police forces by 82,000.

The $2billion in reconstruction aid will go to roads, electrical power supplies, rural development and counter-narcotics operations, the US official said.

Ms Rice said that Bush would ask Congress to commit this additional aid for Afghanistan in a supplemental 2007 budget. The senior official said it would be spread out over the next two years.

Some 33,000 troops from 37 nations under the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) are trying to help spread the influence of President Hamid Karzai's weak central government to more lawless outlying regions.

But the Taliban have been waging a robust insurgency over the last year, particularly in the south and east of the strife-torn country. Around 4,000 people were killed in the insurgency last year and US officials say there were nearly 140 suicide attacks, up from 27 in 2005.—AFP