Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday blamed foreign forces for "hundreds of millions of dollars" worth of corruption in the war-torn country, DPA reported.Speaking at a Kabul meeting marking the country's anti-corruption day, Karzai said: "Part of this corruption that exists in our administration is small and (mostly) bribery. Other part of the corruption, which is huge and (worth) hundreds of millions of dollars, is not our corruption."
(Cartoon: Paresh Nath)
"My dear brothers and sisters, don't blame yourself for that (corruption). It is others' corruption. It has been imposed on us and it is meant to weaken our system," Karzai said, referring to military contracts involving US-led NATO troops in Afghanistan.
Karzai said a month ago he had received a letter from the top US military commander in Afghanistan, General John Allen, saying NATO had cancelled a contract with an Afghan member of parliament after military officials found that money from the contract was being funnelled to Taliban insurgents.
"I asked them (foreign troops) to give us details of each contract," Karzai said, adding the NATO-led alliance "never gave details of those contracts to the Afghan government."
"We have to solve our own problems ourselves. We have to disclose the problem created by others and have no fear of expressing the truth," Karzai said.
Earlier this month, Transparency International ranked Afghanistan the most corrupt state in the world after Sudan.