US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday said US troops would stay in Afghanistan as long as needed, as Washington tries to bolster its influence in the region as an antidote to Islamic extremism.
In a meeting with President Hamid Karzai, whose government is fighting insurgents loyal to the hard-line Islamic Taleban that were ousted from power here by a US-led war four years ago, Rice said the US goal was peace. "There has to be an antidote to extremism and terrorism - and it is prosperity and peace and democracy. Our forces are here for those purposes," Rice said.
"The Afghan people will have partners through Nato and coalition forces, and through American forces, as long as they are needed and in whatever number to make certain we defeat terrorists and Afghanistan becomes a place of stability and progress," she said.
Four rocket attacks in Kabul before she landed underlined the difficulties facing Afghanistan, where warlords, drug traffickers and Islamic militants are challenging the authority and control of the Karzai government.
The country produces more than 80 percent of the world's opium, which is smuggled out and made into heroin, and the illegal crop contributes up to 60 percent of Afghanistan's economy.
Karzai said "the severe need for drugs eradication for the honour of our country for a peaceful future" was a key focus of their talks. The killing of 18 policemen in southern Helmand province late Monday, the biggest attack on the police force that began forming after 2001, could the work of drugs gangs, he said.
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