BRUSSELS: Afghanistan is ready to launch a “name and shame” campaign against high-level corruption and drug trafficking if it gets international backing, a senior minister and ally of President Hamid Karzai said on Sunday.

Education Minister Hanif Atmar said Karzai, a fellow ethnic Pashtun, was prepared to consider action against members of his own entourage if presented with evidence against them.

“We are ready to do that naming and shaming... Six years ago we didn’t want to rock the boat, now it is time for a bold action like that,” Atmar told a security conference in Brussels of the period after the 2001 ousting of the Taliban from power.“It can certainly happen this year ...

The president has said that if we talk about certain people in government, the president has to be provided with evidence and he will decide how to go about it,” he told Reuters later.—Reuters