US envoy in Kabul

By Paul Anderson BBC correspondent in Kabul

Afghans say they have felt little benefit from reconstruction efforts

The US Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, is in Afghanistan for a visit which will focus on security and reconstruction - both fields in which Afghans complain there has been little progress since the Taleban were defeated.

This is a short trip - a matter of hours - squeezed between talks held on Thursday in Pakistan and more talks in Delhi on Saturday.

The point, Mr Armitage says, is to prove to Afghanistan that 18 months after the Taleban were forced from power, the US has not forgotten its commitment to rebuild the country.

Before his arrival, he told Pakistani television he wanted to make a dramatic demonstration of the fact that the US could do two things at once - Iraq and Afghanistan.

American officials in Kabul say Mr Armitage will announce a new $100m aid package targeted at improving health services, for women and children in particular.

War 'not over'

One in five children die in Afghanistan before the age of five and many women still do not have access to adequate health care.

The aid will doubtless be welcome, but increasingly Afghans say they have yet to feel any benefit from the reconstruction effort, particularly in the capital.

Last week, in Kabul the American Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, announced the end of major combat operations in Afghanistan and a shift to the reconstruction phase.

Many Afghans will applaud that, but they also look at increasingly frequent attacks by remnants of the Taleban in the south and at the vicious fighting between rival warlords and they say it is too early to declare the war over.

Mr Armitage will be meeting President Hamid Karzai and government officials, visiting a water project run by the Americans and visiting the Afghan National Museum, to which he is going to give $100,000.