AFP - Afghanistan, struggling to emerge from armed conflict and rigid Taliban rule, was set to sign a new deal with international donors to take its fitful development to a new level.

The five-year Afghanistan Compact will be the highlight of a two-day donors' conference in London attended by the likes of Afghan President Ahmed Karzai, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will also be on hand, after she pledged Monday that Washington would never again neglect the vast, poor but strategic Central Asian nation.

"We're not going to make that mistake again," said Rice, standing beside Karzai and recalling how neglect led to Afghanistan becoming a lair for Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network.

Washington and Kabul are determined to rid Afghanistan of "terrorism" and illegal drug production while promoting peaceful development with the help of strong security forces, Rice added.

Rice met Karzai on Monday to compensate for her abbreviated participation in the conference, which she will be leaving early in order to go back to Washington for US President George W. Bush's annual State of the Union address.

The Afghanistan Compact is to set out specific targets for bolstering security, improving governance, strengthening the rule of law and human rights, while boosting economic and social development.

The US government is expected to announce a major financial contribution for the next fiscal year during the conference of representatives from 70 countries and organizations.

Washington has been Afghanistan's biggest donor -- nearly five billion dollars -- since leading the war that toppled the Taliban four years ago, but now it wants others to carry more of the burden, US and European officials say.

During a visit Sunday to Denmark, Karzai said Afghanistan will need international aid for five years, 10 years or even longer if it is to bolster its security and rebuild its institutions.

Karzai also called for more money to be put directly into the hands of the Afghan government, despite reluctance from donors amid charges of widespread corruption and incompetence.

Writing last week in the International Herald Tribune newspaper, three US-based central Asia analysts said the London meeting must make up for funding shortfalls following donor conferences in Tokyo in 2002 and Berlin in 2004.

These conferences generated less than half of the 28 billion dollars that the Afghan government believes is required for reconstruction, they said.

"Afghanistan is being shortchanged," argued Karl Inderfurth, a former US assistant secretary of state for South Asia affairs, and fellow Asia analysts Frederick Starr and Marvin Weinbaum.

This week's donors' conference comes as NATO prepares to raise its troop levels in Afghanistan from 11,000 to 18,500 over the next three years.

The expansion, which focuses mainly on deployments into southern Helmand province, where Taliban fighters still lurk, will allow the United States to withdraw some of its 18,000 soldiers in Afghanistan.

It is a third phase of expansion by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), which has already deployed in Kabul and northwestern Afghanistan.

Ahead of the London conference, Human Rights Watch appealed to donors and NATO nations alike to help counter the climate of insecurity that has hampered development and access to basic public services for ordinary Afghanis.

"The real measure of security and development in Afghanistan is not the number of foreign troops, but whether people feel safe enough to go to the market, to travel at night to seek medical care, or to send their children to school," said Sam Zarifi, research director of the human right group's Asia division.

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