Afghans must use the representatives they elect next week to get involved in their development and not leave decisions to foreigners, the US ambassador to the country said on Monday.
The United States is committed to helping Afghanistan, and it and other members of the international community will meet to decide the form of future aid, but in the end Afghans must help themselves, he said.
"Don't look only at the foreigner," Ambassador Ronald Neumann told reporters in the eastern town of Gardez, where he had come to inspect a US aid project and meet the provincial governor.
"Your elected representatives will be your voice ... so the people of Gardez also have to be part of deciding what projects are more important. It should not be just the foreigner who decides."
Afghanistan holds national assembly and provincial elections on September 18, and will then have an elected president and parliament for the first time in its history.
The elections are the last step of the so-called Bonn agreement, drawn up by Afghan factions at a UN-organised meeting days after the Taleban were forced from power in late 2001, to plot a path to stable government.
The United Nations, Afghanistan's allies and aid donors are expected to meet in London in January to draft a new plan for the next five years.
"It's very clear the international community is still solidly here and the next piece we have to do is to try to, in a post-Bonn conference, define a little more sharply what the steps need to be," Neumann said.
"It would be useful to lay down an internationally agreed set of goals, benchmarks." Ethnic Pashtun tribal elders with beards and turbans listened as Neumann spoke with reporters.
The United States has 20,000 troops in Afghanistan battling Taleban insurgents, their militant allies in the south and east. Nato has 10,000 peacekeepers, most of them in Kabul, the north and west. The alliance is due to expand its role but it is not yet clear if Nato forces will take on more counter-insurgency responsibilities.
SECURITY, ECONOMIC HELP Neumann said his country was committed to helping Afghanistan militarily and economically.
The United States has rebuilt the road from the capital, Kabul, to Gardez and will extend it to the town of Khost near the Pakistani border, Neumann said.
"But what I cannot tell you today is how fast I will have the money to do that," he said. Like so much of Afghanistan, Gardez, which is dominated by an old fort on a hill, has suffered from decades of conflict and neglect but repairs are being made to the town's infrastructure.
Asked what more the United States might do to help reconstruction, Neumann said: "We will do more. I hope that you also will think what more you can do, as Afghans, for yourselves."
"What things can people build themselves - we will help with seeds, with fertiliser with roads, with water - but in the end Afghans will also have to help themselves."
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