The Americans are pushing not so quietly for a carrot and stick approach, and the international aid community is not convinced.

The stakes are enormous. American officials are predicting that $10 billion will be needed and pledged -- over the next few years for the reconstruction of Afghanistan and Mark Malloch Brown, the head of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) said that the cost would be at least similar to the $6.5 billion spent on Mozambique.

Talks on the problem begin with a World Bank, UNDP and Asian Development meeting in Islamabad next week and a donor's conference in Washington this week. On Tuesday afternoon the heads of al UN agencies and several NGOs working in Afghanistan met under the UNDP umbrella in Islamabad to begin a "brainstorming session" in preparation for the World Bank meeting next week.

The question is how to spend the money.

In private briefings here the Americans have been as tough as nails in their determination to avoid the corruption that plagued the warlord era in Kabul, which in itself brought in the Taliban regime. The Taliban, even the Americans admit, were not corrupt to the core and they were welcomed by the people at first, because they, in fact were organized and could get something done, in contrast to the warlords who took over after the defeat of the Soviet Union and who were generally acknowledged to have been corrupt, turning international aid into private profit.

In separate, but not-for-attribution briefings several American officials have said that beating the corruption was the number one goal. "The warlord wants to be the intermediary between those who have the money and those who do not.

"If you can control the money you can cut out the war lords. You can do that by saying 'you want to play that game, we can play it too. We aren't giving you the money, we'll go to the guy in the next valley'."

"If the warlord can't deliver the goods to the people, the people will throw him out. They are very responsible people. They let in the Taliban because they could get things done. They threw them out because they no longer could."

The official's boss was even more specific: "humanitarian aid will go to the people who need it, military aid will go to the people who can use it, but reconstruction aid will go only to a government that was broad based and recognized as such by the international community."

Frankly admitting that the American aid idea was carrot-and-stick, he said that $10 billion "is a pretty big carrot."

Umer Daudzai, of the UNDP office Islamabad agrees only to a degree. Daudzai, a puckish-looking man with a twinkle in his eye and a ready smile despite the suffering in his native Afghanistan said he is familiar with the American ideas and shares the concerns.

Chatting in his cluttered Islamabad office, Daudzai said " I agree with his (the American official's) concern about corruption. I do not agree with his method."

Daudzai said," money was pumped into Afghanistan to defeat the Soviet Union, like now it is being done to defeat the terrorist.

"That is where we created monsters. We brought in corruption for the first time probably on a large scale and when the war was over and reconstruction started it was basically corruption that made things work. Why? Because war had become business for many people. There was no incentive to peace. "When I say I can agree with his wish that if he wants to use development aid as incentive for peace I agree. But there are details which can ago wrong. "The details should be left to Afghan non-factional intellectuals to come u with idea on how development aid can be used for an incentive for peace. But if that is decided from the outside maybe we will make mistakes again.

"If we say that if one lot will not perform well enough then we will give the aid to another one, that will set up competition and one lot will invade the other one and basically in stead of bringing peace you are creating conflict again."

Daudzai said instead, the international aid community should take advantage of Afghans with more than twenty years experience in problems and "bring them together for one place for one week, and say 'right, come up with a plan' and they will."

"I am not recommending external plans," he said.

The downside is that the process will take a long time. The upside is that the Afghans themselves are perfectly capable of coming up with and executing a national reconstruction plan, he said.

"We have not started planning yet. We have started planning the process that will help us in terms of preparation for planning,"

What is lacking now, he said, are the Afghans, or as he called them "the national counterpart." The new aid system "will be different than the one before, because before, we didn't wait for a national counterpart.

"We started building our own empires. We outsiders, outsiders, thought we could lead Afghanistan, from the outside, without an Afghan government and we were wrong. Afghan government is very much part of the country.

"We will wait in reconstruction until there is a proper government is in place whether that it is tomorrow or six months time it doesn't matter. But what we can do is prepare for that government, so they don't start from zero.

Daudzai emphasized that the planning is separate from though, supportive of the day-to-day humanitarian aid, which should continue apace.

The conference on the 27th is "brainstorming on how to prepare for reconstruction of Afghanistan."

"After the end of these three days they will not come up with a plan. They will come up with areas for preparation for a plan."

"Nothing will be started without a new government," he said.

Daudzai disagreed with published reports that under Taliban rule which emphasized the Koran in schools and did not allow girls to be education, Afghanistan lost an almost an entire generation of trained technicians.

"When you talk about formal education, Taliban did not allow schools and did not allow universities to function. But a lot of informal education was going on. In almost every city inside Afghanistan the were hundreds of computer training course going on, technological courses going on, management training courses going on, languages course going on.

"You go now to Kabul and you talk to any teenager, he'll answer in English. Where did they learn that? In a Taliban school? No, they learned on their own account.

"That has produced an inner human resource that with a slightly more technical skills we can take them to any profession to keep it running.

"Let's say we need now an agriculture extensionist (advisor). We have people who know English. They know computers. All they need is a three months crash course, and there is agriculture extensionist.

And, he said, Afghans are well known as being entrepreneurial.

"That happens in every society when they have problems. That's positive side of this whole scenario." They have learned new skills they have learned how to live with minimum livelihood, learned how to go through hardship and they realized how important it is to have a land of their won, a country of their own, and a system of their own.

"One needs to look at that and welcome that," he said.