US envoy Richard Holbrooke and senior general David Petraeus on Sunday met President Hamid Karzai in Kabul at a conference reviewing US civilian and military involvement in Afghanistan. The three men sat together at the start of a two-day conference to discuss what Nato's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said were the "shared challenges and opportunities ahead" in the war-torn country.
The event, involving senior US and Afghan officials, plus key allied partners, comes after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in January unveiled a long-term, non-military plan to stabilise Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Holbrooke, whose office produced the strategy, is Washington's special representative for both countries while Petraeus oversees US military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq.