US envoy urges EU aid for Pakistan, Afghanistan

US envoy Richard Holbrooke urged the EU Monday to boost aid to Pakistan to help beat the Afghan insurgency, as President Barack Obama seeks a way to end more than seven years of fighting.

Holbrooke was in Brussels to brief NATO and European Union officials on a new US strategy for Afghanistan.

It puts Pakistan at the heart of efforts to beat the Taliban, who are backed by Al-Qaeda fighters, drug runners and criminal gangs.

"He asked the commission to increase its economic aid to Pakistan," an EU diplomat said, after Holbrooke held a series of "highly classified discussions" with officials, including members of the EU's executive commission.

"We are all very concerned about what is happening in Pakistan. It is a major security issue for everybody, a problem of political stability," the diplomat said, on condition of anonymity.

"It's a zone that's even more sensitive than Afghanistan."

The commission has already made plans to send a team to Afghanistan next month to assess whether security is ripe for an observer mission to monitor potentially-pivotal elections in August.

The polls are seen as a litmus test of international efforts to stabilise Afghanistan and foster democracy and reconstruction, seven years after the former Taliban regime was ousted by a US-led coalition.

"The commission indicated that it was planning to commit 50 to 60 million euros for the Afghan elections," the diplomat said.

The EU is already providing Afghanistan with some eight billion euros over the 2001-2010 period.

The diplomat said that Holbrooke had also discussed Afghan government plans to boost the notoriously corrupt police, from around 78,000 personnel currently to around 180,000 officers.

The EU agreed in May 2008 to double the size of its EUPOL police mission in Afghanistan, to some 400 personnel from around 200 police, law enforcement and justice experts initially sent. But it is struggling to do so.

On Thursday, the six EU nations contributing to the paramilitary European Gendarmerie Force -- France, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania and Spain -- agreed it could be used to help train the Afghan police. Turkey may also get involved in the project.

"We are going to try to coordinate and integrate the efforts of EUPOL, the US initiatives, and the action of the European Gendarmerie Force," the diplomat said, referring to the paramilitary police unit.

In all, Washington believes between 2,000- and 3,000 instructors will be needed to rebuild a force that Holbrooke has described as the "weak link" in Afghanistan's security chain.

Earlier Monday, the US envoy met NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and ambassadors from troop-contributing nations in Afghanistan.

"The ambassadors offered their viewpoints and of course had questions about where the US intended to go," a NATO official said, adding that the US review did not appear completed yet.

"There's got to be an exit strategy," he said in an interview aired Sunday on CBS television's 60 Minutes show. "There's got to be a sense that this is not a perpetual drift."





Bleier