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UN Envoy Says Afghanistan Faces Both Crisis and Opportunity
Afghanistan is facing both severe crisis and a new opportunity, the problems Afghans encountering are still serious and the U.N. regrets "profoundly the additional sufferings inflicted on the innocent Afghan people.", said Lakhdar Brahimi, United Nations secretary general's special representative for Afghanistan on Tuesday in Tehran.
"We have reiterated a call to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to stop as soon as possible the bombing of Afghanistan," accused by the U.S. for harboring Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect of the September 11 terror attacks on the U.S., Brahimi said.
Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister, has been holding intensive consultations with Iranian officials for four days in a row.
"The opportunity, however, is that the world has realized even a small and remote country like Afghanistan cannot be left with its problems for so long," he said.
He said the mission of the U.N. is to see whether the people of Afghan can avail themselves of the opportunities in the fields of humanitarian, political and post-conflict reconstruction.
The U.N. is trying to do everything possible to help millions of Afghan people, in or out of the country, who are in desperate need of humanitarian aid, he said.
On the political front, he said that the U.N. has been for well over 10 years trying to help the Afghan people end their internal conflicts, which are unsuccessful so far.
"But perhaps this new opportunity will allow Afghan people and U.N. to do better than in the past," he stressed.
Regarding to the post-conflict reconstruction, he said that "the international community for the first time has understood that political solution will be greatly enhanced and reinforced by a determined, serious, lasting effort to help people of Afghanistan reconstruct themselves."
He said that substantial resources will be made available for this effort and the U.N. has been trying to prepare the ground for implementation of the programs.
He is scheduled to report to the U.N. General Assembly's special meeting on Afghanistan in New York on November 12.
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