Luxembourg - European Union foreign ministers on Tuesday approved a new joint strategy aimed at strengthening their influence in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including by boosting funding there. The aim of the strategy is to "reinforce, strengthen and streamline the EU's engagement in state- and peace- building," Sweden's Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said.
Bildt chaired the meeting as the current holder of the EU's rotating presidency.
The strategy calls on the EU to put more effort into training the Afghan government in how to run a country, alongside current Western efforts to fight the Taliban-led insurgency.
"While security is critical, we can never succeed if we don't manage to build a basic state with basic governance," Bildt said.
It also says that the bloc should help Pakistan reform its legal and security system so it can deal more effectively with terrorism, and look for ways to boost trade - something Pakistan's leaders have long demanded.
The EU is desperate to turn Afghanistan into a country which can defend itself against Taliban-linked militants, so that Western troops stationed in the country can come home. The bloc is already pouring funds worth some 1 billion euros a year into the country.
Under the new strategy, the European Commission, the EU's executive, "will increase substantially our assistance to Afghanistan and also Pakistan," EU Foreign Affairs Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said.
It is too early to say how substantial the increase will be, she said.
Eight years after the expulsion of the Taliban, the EU is unhappy with progress in Afghanistan, criticizing both its own efforts and those of the Afghan authorities.
"There clearly needs to be a new start in Afghanistan, no question about that," Bildt said.
In particular, the EU is concerned by the massive rate of fraud in August's Afghan presidential election.
The election "led to a decline in confidence both internally and externally in the efforts in Afghanistan. That must be repaired, and that can only be repaired by a very credible reform programme immediately after the second round of the elections," scheduled for November 7, Bildt said.
To that end, the EU is to send a "big" team to observe the run-off poll between President Hamid Karzai and his main challenger, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, Ferrero-Waldner said. Dutch Member of the European Parliament Thijs Berman will lead it, she said.
However, the EU is also dissatisfied with its own performance, both in terms of coordination and in the question of training the Afghan police force. The EU approved a 200-strong training mission in 2007 and agree to double its size in 2008, but its member states have so far only managed to deploy around 250 officers.
The mission "had its problems from the beginning," because policemen are harder to find than soldiers, Bildt acknowledged.
"Soldiers are paid to stay in the barracks until something happens, policemen are out on the beat," he said.
