Afghans to ask for $50 bln aid at Paris conference

By Jon Hemming

KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan will ask international donors for $50 billion in aid at a conference in Paris next month, President Hamid Karzai's senior economic advisor said.

Afghanistan is one of the world's poorest countries and depends on aid for 90 percent of its spending as it tries to rebuild an economy shattered by 30 years of war and also fight off a Taliban insurgency that killed 6,000 people last year.

International donors have pledged some $24 billion at three donor conferences since 2002, but the level of aid to Afghanistan is still many times lower per head than to other countries struggling emerging from conflict such as Kosovo or East Timor.

After the toppling of the Taliban by U.S.-led and Afghan forces in 2001, both the international community and Afghan officials underestimated the scale of damage to the economy and infrastructure and also did not foresee the re-emergence of the Taliban and the ongoing burden of fighting the insurgency.

"We did not know the level and depth of destruction of this country," Ishaq Nadiri, Karzai's senior economic advisor, told reporters late on Tuesday.

"The Afghan disaster was complete," he said. "The level of destruction was unlike anything I have seen in the developing world with the loss of human capital, physical capital and social capital.

"The collapse of Afghanistan was total, so now we have to build on all fronts simultaneously," he said.

SECURITY, INFRASTRUCTURE PRIORITIES  Continued...