KABUL - Afghanistan on Monday called on foreign donors to hand over a larger slice of development funds to the government, which controls less than a quarter of the aid flowing in to the war-torn country.
At the start of a three-day forum on Afghanistan's development, US-backed President Hamid Karzai outlined his strategy for rebuilding the country's shattered infrastructure in the coming years.
But brewing at the center of the forum is a row over whether the development money should be channeled to Afghans or foreigners aid workers and contractors.
A huge amount of resentment both within the Afghan government and the public has built up against the international community in Afghanistan, as foreign workers nicknamed the "Toyota Taliban" drive around in landcruisers as most of the population ekes out a living on less than two dollars a day.
However, with Afghan ministries still struggling to find their feet after 23 years of war, international donors are skeptical the Afghan government can transparently deal with the massive flows of reconstruction cash.
And since about 93 percent of Afghanistan's 2005 reconstruction budget of 4.75 billion dollars is financed by foreign governments, international donors have the last word.
In April 2004 in Berlin, the international community pledged 8.2 billion dollars for the 2004-2006 period, including 4.5 billion in 2004.
Only 23 percent of the international assistance goes through the Afghan government, with the remaining 77 percent being channeled through humanitarian aid agencies or private contractors, according to Afghan budget figures released Sunday.
The lion's share "of the development budget goes outside our government budget. Given the responsibilities of the government to the people, we should relook at this issue," Karzai's economic advisor Ishaq Nadiri said.
In parts of Afghanistan, especially in the south where US-led soldiers are battling a Taliban insurgency three and a half years after the fall of the regime, reconstruction has stalled and rural development in the country has remained painfully slow.
"I don't think that the money that has been given to Afghanistan has reached the Afghan countryside in a proper manner," Karzai said.
However, he added that government corruption and private companies that have set themselves up as charities in order to escape paying taxes was also a mounting problem.
"We must make sure that corruption in administration, corruption in private sector and corruption in NGOs (non governmental organisations) is handled, in order to respect the donors' taxpayers' money," the president added.
While Afghan and foreign NGOs have been criticised for squandering funds instead of supporting the Afghan public, international lenders said the Afghan state is still too embryonic to absorb all the reconstruction money coming in.
Praful Patel, president of the World Bank for South Asia, said lack of skills within Afghan ministries and departments was "worrying."
"Indeed, there is some evidence from the health sector in Afghanistan that contracting out delivery of basic health services to NGOs produces accountability and equitable service provisions at competitive costs," Patel said.
UN special representative Jean Arnault echoed his comments about the vital role of aid agencies.
"Government institutions, bilateral efforts, private sector, multilateral organisations, NGO and community organizations have been present working together in many of the most successful endeavours to date," Arnault said.
The Afghan government had planned to adopt a law aiming to regulate humanitarian aid agencies more tightly but drew flak from international donors after it said it would bar NGOs from being able to bid for government contracts.
After an outcry by aid agencies and donor governments Karzai backed down announcing Sunday that he would launch a "working group to look into the issue."
A western source working with the Afghan government said: "The Afghan government wants more money, but it is not able to absorb it and manage it, because of the corruption and the lack of training of its thousands of officials."
There was also "an enormous waste of the international assistance by certain NGOs, in particular Afghan", the source said.

04/04/2005 16:27 GMT