Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-01-15-Speech-3-039"
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"en.20030115.3.3-039"2
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". – I will be very brief in responding to a debate which has ranged extremely wide. Mr Andrews' contribution covered not only Afghanistan but Iraq. If he had been able to stay until the end of the debate, I would have said that I fear we will have further opportunities to discuss Iraq and he may be able to take part.
I would like to thank Members such as Mrs Fraisse who praised the work done by our officials in Kabul and beyond. They do have a difficult job. It is not the easiest assignment to manage our programme there. I will certainly pass on the commendation of Members. I would also like to express once again my agreement with Mr van Orden that we are in this for the long haul. There are no quick fixes in Afghanistan. We have to go on repeating that. We cannot simply call what we have done so far success and move on to the next failed state. There is a great deal for us to do, not least, as Mrs Fraisse said, in helping to create a public service in Afghanistan which will be able to deliver the sort of services we would want to see to the whole community. The quality of some of the members of the Afghan diaspora who have returned to Afghanistan gives one a good deal of confidence in what could be achieved in that country. I could mention Mr Ghani and many other Afghans who have gone back to their country to help reconstruct it after the years of medieval ferocity to which its people of Afghanistan have been subjected. So I can assure Mrs Fraisse that we shall continue to give proper attention to support and training for public services.
We have, more than most other donors in Afghanistan, provided budgetary assistance for the ordinary business of government. It is not a very attractive, or sexy thing for donors to do. Donors typically like to have projects and like to have blue plaques on walls and flags over buildings. But unless there is a decent public administration in Afghanistan, unless there are nurses and teachers and doctors and police officers, men and women, and unless those people are paid regularly, there will not be a government that can extend its authority over the whole country. So I continue to defend the priority that we give to that.
One would have to be deaf not to recognise the concern the House has expressed about women's rights as part of a general concern about human rights. I could go through a list of the projects that we are helping to support, such as the park for women in Kabul, but I will merely say that I think the best way of reflecting Parliament's concern is to raise this issue at the meeting of the Afghanistan Development Forum in March, when we should be monitoring progress. We will emphasise then that this Parliament, which votes this money so intelligently and generously, wants us to ensure that the issue of women's rights is at the heart of the government's approach to development.
Let me just say one other word about donor coordination, because several speakers have referred to that and I only touched on it in general terms in my opening remarks. I fully agree that development aid to Afghanistan must be used to maximum effect and that effective coordination is critical. The Afghan Government has now put in place the structures to coordinate donors. The October implementation group meeting in Kabul agreed to move to a consultative group structure, which is the one that we typically put in place in countries receiving substantial assistance from the international donor community. We strongly support this initiative. It should ensure that donors are well-coordinated and that funds are targeted to the priorities agreed by the consultative group.
We have also established an informal European donor forum to help develop a coordinated European Union approach to key issues and meetings and there is also an informal donor network between the European Commission and the Member States, the United States and Japan. Through ECHO, the Commission has had extensive experience of operating in Afghanistan over the last ten years and has established close working relationships with non-governmental organisations. As the crisis in Afghanistan unfolded, the key priority was to deliver humanitarian support quickly and effectively, but now looking to the future, it will be important to ensure that all donors operate within the framework and priorities set by the consultative group. So we are aware of these concerns. We want to do more about them and, as I said in my opening speech, I intend to pursue this when, God willing, I visit Afghanistan next month."@en1
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