AFP 01/29/2007

Hot on the heels of a major US funding pledge, the European Union said it would contribute 600 million euros (775 million dollars) in aid to Afghanistan over the next four years.

EU commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said the funding would be largely used to bolster the judiciary in order to fight corruption in the strife-torn country.

She said the EU wanted to ensure that judges "can do in the future what we take for granted" in the West.

The EU aid will also go towards encouraging farmers to grow crops other than opium poppies in Afghanistan, the world's biggest producer of the drug.

The broad lines of a package first announced in Brussels last week were set out at a meeting of the so-called EU troika which groups German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, whose country is the current EU president, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and Portuguese Foreign Minister Luis Amado.

Afghan Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta also attended the meeting.

The EU pledge follows the announcement last week that the United States plans to spend an additional 10.6 billion dollars in Afghanistan over two years and extend the tour of duty of more than 3,000 US troops there by four months.

At Washington's urging, NATO has agreed to step up military and economic efforts early this year when Taliban insurgents are expected to launch a fresh offensive as the weather warms.

Fighting in Afghanistan last year left 4,000 people dead, mostly rebels.

Spanta denied that a military offensive would hamper reconstruction efforts.

"We believe that we need to stabilize the situation before terrorist groups can reform," he told journalists after Monday's meeting.

"Yet on the other hand we have to continue our efforts for the rural populations, especially in the south."

Steinmeier said the dire reports of the security situation in Afghanistan obscured the fact that "there has been much civilian progress in the country".

He said better coordination between international military and civilian efforts was necessary if the lives of ordinary Afghans were to be improved.

"Despite all our efforts to secure Afghanistan, we have to win over the hearts of the Afghan people."

The combined contribution from the joint EU budget and EU member states to Afghanistan for the period 2002-2006 totalled 3.7 billion euros.

The new package for the period 2007-2010 will also focus on health, as well as rural development and the reform of the justice sector.

Over the next few months, the EU's executive arm plans to place experts in key Afghan justice institutions -- the justice ministry, supreme court and the attorney general's office -- to help draw up reform plans for the judiciary.

Solana said it was increasingly likely that EU badge-wearing police advisors would be sent to Afghanistan soon.

"An EU police mission in Afghanistan is very likely," Solana said in a speech to a conference on European security and defence policy which followed the aid announcement.

EU foreign ministers are next month expected to formally endorse such a mission to support the NATO-led military and reconstruction campaign.

German experts are already helping to train the Afghan police force.

Solana also said he would hold talks with Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz in Brussels this week to discuss concerns that his country was not doing enough to stop insurgents from mounting attacks from within its territory.

The Afghan foreign minister told a German newspaper that Pakistan must be put under pressure.

"There are powerful circles in the Pakistani government which use fundamentalism and export it... To prevent this, it is urgent that we speak to Pakistan in clear terms," he said in an interview for Tuesday's Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily.

A two-day international conference on reconstruction in Afghanistan opens in the German capital on Tuesday.