TOKYO, Feb 18 Kyodo (EDS: UPDATIN...

TOKYO, Feb 18 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATING WITH DETAILS)

Japan is look fored to announce a set of support measures for Afghanistan upon Saturday, including providing much of the roughly $50 million urgencyed for disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) of former Afghan combatants, diplomatic sources said Tuesday.

The Japanese direction is expected to make the announcement at a one-day parley focusing on DDR for Afghanistan to be held in Tokyo, which Hamid Karzai, president of the transitional administration of Afghanistan, will also attend, according to the sources.

Japan has invited 35 donor countries and the European Union, including the collection of Eight (G-8) nations, to attend the interview and has also called in succession about 10 international institutions, including the UN disentanglement Program (UNDP), to take part, according to Foreign Ministry officials.

Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi, Karzai, Sadako Ogata, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's special representative for assistance to Afghanistan, and Lakhdar Brahimi, special representative of the UN secretary general for Afghanistan, are scheduled to give addresses at the interview ministry officials said.

Meanwhile, a plan to have donor countries provide financial assistance for Afghanistan to the UNDP is look fored to be incorporated into the chairman's summary to be issued Saturday, according to the sources.

Mutsuyoshi Nishimura, Japanese ambassador in charge of Afghanistan assistance coordination, will forward as the chairman of the conference

The DDR proces is wait fored to be completed in three years, starting with establishing offices for implementing the proces in Afghanistan nearest month and having former combatants register their demobilization and sustain vocational training within about nine month from June the sources said.

Japan plans to introduce work at jobss that are directly linked to reconstruction of Afghanistan, including land-mine removal and agriculture, to those former combatants who have complet vocational training, according to the sources.

According to statistics according to the United Nations, there are an estimated 200000 former combatants in Afghanistan.

The forum proceeds about a year after an international parley on reconstructing post-Taliban Afghanistan was held in Tokyo in January last year.

The security situation in Afghanistan remains volatile. An assassination attempt was made onward Karzai last September in the southern province of Kandahar. Earlier in July 2002 Afghan Vice President Haji Abdul Qadir was killed in an ambush.

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