US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul Monday ahead of an international conference on the future of the war-torn country. The politicians dined together after Clinton had flown into Kabul from Pakistan in the evening and met the new commander of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus.
Clinton congratulated Karzai on a major trade deal struck between Afghanistan and Pakistan while the Afghan president underlined the pivotal role of the US in nailing down the pact, which had been decades in the making. The conference, starting on Tuesday, aims to chart a future of peace and development for Afghanistan and show supporters the country is acting on past pledges. "An enormous amount of... preparation has been done by the Afghans.