UN Secretary General arrives in Kabul

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan arrived in Kabul on Friday to express solidarity with the people of Afghanistan. "I hope (your visit) will bring a lot of benefits, a lot of attention to Afghanistan," Masooda Jalal, an Afghan UN worker, told the Secretary General at a meeting with UN staff soon after his arrival in the city.

The Secretary General lauded the efforts of UN staff to provide crucial aid to the people of Afghanistan in extremely difficult circumstances. "You have done a lot already and I urge you to carry on," the Secretary General told the gathering.

The Secretary General is visiting Afghanistan as part of a three day tour of the region which began in Pakistan on Thursday. He is due to fly to the Iranian capital, Tehran, later on Friday.

His tour follows a major international donor meeting to raise funds for the war-ravaged country in Tokyo. A total of US $4.5 billion was pledged towards the daunting task of reconstructing Afghanistan.

"He is coming to the region to express his solidarity with the people of Afghanistan in their time of need, to see for himself the hardships they have suffered," Ahmad Fawzi, spokesman for Lakhdar Brahimi, special envoy of the Secretary General for Afghanistan, told reporters.

The Secretary General is due to hold meetings with the Afghan interim administration, visit a girls school being run with the help of the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) and later hold a news conference.

Fawzi said his visit to the girls school was a message to the Afghan people and the international community about the significance and importance of education, particularly women's education, banned during the rule of the hardline Taliban.

"Education is an important priority for the people of Afghanistan. When you talk to them about what they want the most, they say education for our children before they say food, of course they need food as well," Fawzi said.

Annan will tour parts of the city that have been particularly affected by the war. He will also meet ordinary Afghans who have suffered from over two decades of conflict. The Secretary General's visit to Kabul is the first since UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold visited the Central Asian country in 1959.

In Iran he is scheduled to meet senior leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Muhammad Khatami, the UN has continually called upon Afghanistan's neighbours to support peace in the country.