Officials at an international conference in Rome pledged US$360 million in new funds on Tuesday to train judges, build infrastructure and take other measures to strengthen Afghanistan's justice system.
The pledge ended a two-day conference on rule of law in Afghanistan that had been largely overshadowed by concerns over civilian casualties by NATO forces in the country.
The NATO secretary-general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, said the alliance would do everything in its power to avoid civilian casualties, and said deaths of innocent people would be investigated. He stressed, however, that Taliban and other extremists were in a "different moral category" from coalition soldiers who inadvertently cause civilian casualties.
"Our opponents mingle and mix with innocent civilians," he said on the sidelines of the conference. "We do not intentionally kill; they behead people, they burn schools, they kill women and children."
"That said, NATO will do and has to do everything in its ability to prevent civilian casualties," he told reporters. "For NATO, every single civilian life lost in Afghanistan is one too many."
The issue has been a sensitive one for the international military mission in Afghanistan. Over the weekend, Afghan officials said 45 civilians were killed in a bombing by NATO and the US-led coalition in Helmand province. President Hamid Karzai, who has asked international forces to take better care of Afghan lives, has sent a team to investigate.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, saying he was "very much saddened and troubled" by the civilian deaths, urged Afghan and international forces "to act strictly in accordance with international humanitarian law" -- even in the face of a "shadowy and unscrupulous adversary."
"We simply cannot hide from the reality that civilian casualties, no matter how accidental, strengthen our enemies and undermine our efforts," he said.
The recent civilian deaths have sparked demands for compensation for the victims' families, and the topic, while not on the conference agenda, came up on the sidelines.
"NATO in Afghanistan has got to provide justice to civilians harmed by their combat operations. That means immediate compensation and aid," said Sarah Holewinski, the executive director of the US-based group CIVIC Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, who attended the conference.
The Rome meeting, gathering officials and legal experts, looked at ways to improve a justice system that has been destroyed by years of violence.
Karzai told the conference that urgent priorities included low salaries, poor infrastructure and the training of personnel.
The new funds would be devoted to the training of judges, rebuilding prisons and other infrastructure, Foreign Ministry officials said at the conference. Some projects would take up to four years to complete, they said.
"The conference represents an important step in the international commitment in Afghanistan," said Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema, a co-chair of the conference with the UN and the Afghan leaders.
Efforts to establish the rule of law have been hindered by the lack of security, amid the ongoing fight with resurgent Taliban forces in the country's south and elsewhere. "Where terrorism in its most atrocious form remains an almost daily occurrence, as is regrettably the case in some parts of Afghanistan, justice will seem elusive still," said Karzai.
Italy, which has 2,000 troops as part of the NATO-led contingent in Afghanistan, has been leading efforts to rebuild the country's legal system. It has long maintained that nation-building measures must accompany the military campaign if the country's unsteady democracy is to be made more stable.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
RSS