The international community Tuesday endorsed sweeping Afghan government plans to take responsibility for security by 2014, forge peace to end nine years of war and take greater control of aid projects. UN chief Ban Ki-moon and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton led 70 organizations and countries at a landmark conference in Kabul trying to put Afghanistan on the road to stability and allowing foreign troops to draw down. President Hamid Karzai delivered a keynote address seeking to convince the international community he was capable of assuming responsibility for security and cleaning up government, but the lasting impact of the conference remains unclear. The final communique backed Karzai's call for Afghan security forces to "lead and conduct military operations in all provinces by the end of 2014", allowing US-led troops to start going home. Clinton said the plan laid out by the Afghan government was "comprehensive" and that the conference marked a "turning point", while British Prime Minister David Cameron said plans for a transition in four years were "realistic". Karzai said the international community had committed enough money to see Afghanistan through the next three years and called for greater control of the multi-billion-dollar aid budget for his impoverished country. The conference urged Kabul to make reforms to strengthen public financial management and reduce corruption, saying at least 50 percent of development aid would be channelled into the government's budget within two years. Previously, only 20 percent of $40 billion of pledged international aid had been routed through the budget, leading to corruption among the rest. "We all agree that steady transition to Afghan leadership and ownership is the key to sustainability," Karzai said. The conference also endorsed a peace and reintegration program drawn up by the Afghan government in order to reach out to insurgents who renounce violence, have no links to Al-Qaeda and respect the constitution. Clinton emphasized that much more work faced the Afghan government -- a refrain that was echoed by other foreign ministers in their speeches. "The Afghan government is stepping forward to deal with a multitude of difficult challenges. We're encouraged by much of what we see, particularly their work to improve governance," Clinton said. British Foreign Secretary William Hague, whose country is the second biggest supplier of foreign troops to Afghanistan, said: "We will always need to see that the government is making the best possible use of our and its own money."
