Afghan Foreign Minister Dadfar Spanta was in Japan yesterday for talks ahead of an international meeting to help the war-torn nation rebuild itself.
Beginning today, Spanta will take part in a two-day meeting of the Afghanistan Joint Coordination and Monitoring Board, an international committee that oversees implementation of the country's reconstruction plans.
Japan, which is hosting the G8 summit of major industrial nations this summer, "is hosting the meeting to re-confirm the commitment of the international community to assist Afghanistan," a foreign ministry statement said.
Spanta was due to meet separately yesterday with Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura, officials said.
Japan is a major contributor to Afghanistan's rebuilding efforts, particularly those to bolster Kabul's police force and to fight drug production and trafficking.
Tokyo has already pledged more than ?140 billion (US$1.2 billion) to help Afghanistan after a US-led coalition ousted the Taliban regime following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
But Japan, officially pacifist since World War II, has seen controversy over military help to the US-led "war on terror."
Fukuda's government was last month forced to use nearly unprecedented parliamentary procedures to restart a naval mission supporting the coalition's war effort in Afghanistan in the face of vigorous protest from Japan's opposition parties.
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