Nations Pledge Billions to Revive Afghanistan
From the
NY Times, good news for the people of Afghanistan:
bq. Nations from around the world have pledged $4.4 billion in aid and low-cost loans to help stabilize and rebuild Afghanistan next year, with the United States accounting for about half of the contributions so far, American officials said Wednesday.
bq. At an international donors conference here, 65 delegations representing more than 50 nations assembled a financial package that Afghan and Bush administration officials said would total $8.2 billion over the next three years. Administration officials were elated with the outcome, which they said would help allow the Kabul government to pay salaries to its workers, prepare for national elections in September and continue to rebuild the country's infrastructure.
Very excellent news - there is no word on who the other nations are except that the conference was co-sponsored by the US, Japan and Germany (Germany? cool!) who each pledged about $400 million.
It will be interesting to see just how much France and Russia walk the walk - after all, France has all the Oil-for-Food billions still sitting in it's largest bank.
Posted by DaveH at March 31, 2004 7:23 PM