TRANSCRIPT

Matthew Amroliwala, Presenter:  The UN has a new special representative to Afghanistan.  Kai Eide's role will include co-ordinating the efforts of the international donor community and raising the profile of the UN in Afghanistan.  Well, let's speak to him now.  He's in our central London studio and thank you so much for joining us.  What, in your view, are your main challenges?

Kai Eide, United Nations Special Representative to Afghanistan:  My main challenge is to bring the international community together on the development side, on the political side and also seeing to it that all these various dimensions in which we are engaged in Afghanistan come together in a coherent way, and I think in all those dimensions there is a lot to be... to be done.

MA:  It's extraordinary that you say that, given the years that this operation has been going on in Afghanistan, if you're still talking about the absolute basics like that.

KE:  Well, I think if you look at the Balkans you'll see how many years it took us to get where we are today.  This is a country that is much bigger, much poorer - one of the five poorest countries in the world - without an infrastructure, without a strong government and... governance and government system.  Certainly they're at... completely different stage of development.  It will take time, it will take time on the military side and it will take time on the development and government side.

MA:  Why has the Taliban been allowed to return in the way it has?

KE:  I think we were all surprised in 2005, 2006 to see that they came back, and... and what we've seen over the last period was, of course, a change of tactics from their side.  I believe that that reflects that they are on the defensive and that we are, in fact, doing quite well on the security side.

MA:  Did the international community just take their eye off the ball, do you think?

KE:  Perhaps we did for a while.  We underestimated their ability to come back, but let's now concentrate on the situation the way it is today.  We have to continue the security operations but also, as I said, we have to get things right on the development side where we do not spend the money as efficiently as we could, and we have to also give more... much more provenance to the political dimension in all this because we all know that in the end this cannot only be a military solution - it has to be basically a political solution.  That is where we have to concentrate today, I believe.

MA:  Part of that equation, of course, are the poppy fields.  We've seen the re-emergence there too.  Should they be destroyed?

KE:  I think we... we all see the problems that we have on the... on the drugs side and we have to move more efficiently.  We have not seen much progress with regard to the overall figures, but there are certain positive trends.  We see today more poppy-free provinces than there were before.  The total production is high and will probably remain stable for the next year or two, but there are... there's progress.  What I believe really are two important dimensions here is governance - we have to see it... that we have governors, police chiefs, et cetera that are competent and ready to address the question.  We're making some progress on that and we also have to place much more attention to reform the entire agricultural sector.  That's going to take time...

MA:  Okay.

KE:  ...but I must say we have not given that also the attention it deserves.

MA:  A brief final word, then.  You've laid out what the absolute priorities are.  What are the consequences globally if there's failure in Afghanistan from the international community?

KE:  I think we cannot get back to a situation where Afghanistan becomes a safe haven for extremists and terrorists the way we saw a few years ago.  We simply cannot accept it.  I think it also would be a defeat for the Afghan people.  We have seen progress over the last few years - we cannot allow them to slip back to the regime that they suffered under for so many years.  And third, it's also of such importance to the international organisations and international corporation that... be associated [sounds like] in this and to the credibility of these organisations, so we have as much at stake for the Afghan people, for all of us, and we have to succeed.

MA:  Kai Eide, the new UN special representative for Afghanistan, thank you very much.

Ends