Looking ahead to second chance

WASHINGTON -- The United States must play a big role in reconstructing Afghanistan and not squander another chance for partnership they way it did in 1989 after helping Afghans oust the Soviet Union, administration officials and senators agreed Thursday.

"One of the reasons Osama bin Laden is in Afghanistan today is because the United States walked away from victory after the fall of the Soviet occupation," Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C. said at a Senate Foreign Relations hearing on Afghanistan's political future. "The massacres and counter-massacres that followed the Soviet departure made the Taliban look appealing to the Afghan people."

Committee Chairman Joseph Biden, D-Del., said, "We must help lay the foundations of a stable government, so that Afghanistan does not slide back into the warlordism and anarchy of the past."

Richard Haass, the State Department director of policy planning, said he had "guarded optimism" about Afghanistan. "I'm not going to be Pollyanna and say it's going to be smooth sailing. It's not."

But the agreement reached this week by various Afghan factions on an interim government is a sign of progress, as is the lack of reprisals, Haass said.

"This is the best chance in modern history to set Afghanistan on a successful and stable path," he said.

The administration, however, does not want to dominate reconstruction in the manner it is dominating the war against terrorism.

"There's a dilemma here," he said. "It's the Goldilocks case. We want to do enough, but not too much. ... We do not want to make this an American enterprise. It's not."

Instead, Afghanistan itself, its neighbors and the rest of the world must carry much of the reconstruction burden, which U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said would cost more than $10-billion over five to 10 years.

The amount the administration intends to devote to reconstruction has not been determined, Haass said.

Afghanistan expert Thomas E. Gouttierre urged the senators to aim high.

Whatever it costs, he said, "It will not be as expensive as what we will need to spend if we do it on the cheap and fail."

Meanwhile, Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., introduced a bill Thursday to provide $1.6-billion in aid to the Afghan people.

He said it will provide "a positive alternative to the poverty, repression, and religious fanaticism that breeds terrorists such as Osama bin Laden and his minions."

The bipartisan measure by the senior Democrat on the House International Relations Committee includes $875-million for rehabilitation and reconstruction assistance over four years, $325-million in immediate humanitarian aid, and $150-million for a multinational security force and interim civil authority.

Support urged for Iraqi opposition

WASHINGTON -- A bipartisan group of lawmakers wants President Bush to support Iraqi opposition forces with humanitarian assistance, information-gathering material and military training.

The nine lawmakers said U.S. efforts to replace President Saddam Hussein will not succeed without the help of allies on the ground inside Iraq.

In a letter to Bush dated Wednesday, the lawmakers said the support should be directed to the London-based Iraqi National Congress, the umbrella organization for all major groups opposed to Saddam.

They charged that successive administrations, ignoring the wishes of Congress, have denied U.S. assistance for the INC to carry out operations inside Iraq.

Among the signers were the House International Relations Committee chairman, Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill.; Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; former vice presidential nominee Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn.; and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

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