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Rome summit pledges Afghanistan aid

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.
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