The governments of 51 countries agreed a new rebuilding plan for Aghanistan today, promising billions of dollars in aid and military support to help the country emerge from poverty and reform its drug-dependent economy.

Led by Tony Blair, the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, and the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, delegates pledged their support to the "Afghanistan Compact", a plan for the next five years of reconstruction.

More than $11.9 billion (£6.7 billion) in aid has already been spent trying to repair Afghanistan since the US-led invasion toppled the Taleban in late 2001. But after 25 years of stop-start violence and occupation, the country remains one of the poorest in the world and in the grip of large-scale opium production and corruption. Afghan poppies supply 87 per cent of the world's heroin and make up more than half of the country's GDP.

Today, Dr Rice said President George Bush would seek approval for an extra $1.1 billion (£619 million) of aid to Afghanistan next year - on top of the nearly $6 billion (£3.4 billion) already promised by the US. Mr Blair said Britain would contribute £500 million over the next three years.

"The transformation of Afghanistan is remarkable but incomplete," said Dr Rice, before returning to Washington for Mr Bush’s State of the Union speech this evening. "And it is essential that we all increase our support for the Afghan people."

The Prime Minister praised Afghanistan for the "tremendous progress" made since the fall of the Taleban, citing the 7 million people that voted in the country's first presidential and parliamentary elections for a generation. "This is a struggle for freedom, for moderation and for democracy and we're with you all the way," he told Mr Karzai.

The "Compact" will continue the rebuilding of the Afghan education system and the country's infrastructure. The plan also calls for a trebling of the Afghan army, to 70,000 soldiers, and a reduction of the number of people living on less than $1-a-day by 3 per cent per year.

Russia plans to forgive more than $10 billion (£5.6 billion) in Soviet-era debt owed to it by Afghanistan, Sergei Storchak, the Russian Deputy Finance Minister, told Russian news agencies yesterday.

The conference also discussed the worsening security situation. Earlier this month, the Ministry of Defence announced that an extra 3,300 British troops will be deployed to Afghanistan as part of the Nato force which has gradually assumed more responsibility in the country. The US military presence will decrease from 19,000 to 16,500 troops over the course of 2006.

Last year was the deadliest year for militant violence in Afghanistan since 2001. Around 1,600 people were killed, including 91 American troops, in a deepening insurgency believed to be orchestrated by former Taleban leaders. The tactic of suicide bombings has spread to the region, with 20 such attacks in the last four months.

Speaking last night, Dr Rice promised Afghanistan that America would not desert the country before the newly elected government has mastered its warlords and drug-dependent economy. She said the US had learned the lesson of backing Afghanistan against the USSR in the 1980s and then leaving.

"We made the mistake once before of leaving Afghanistan and not only did Afghans pay for it, Americans paid for it on September 11," said Dr Rice. "We’re not going to make that mistake again."

But the optimism of rebuilding - Afghan school enrolment has increased by more than 500 per cent in the last four years - has been tempered by allegations of corruption and disagreement over what to do about the drugs industry.

In a news conference in Kabul designed to coincide with this morning's talks, the country's former planning minister said the billions of dollars in aid had been wasted in corruption and inefficient projects.

"There is minimum improvement in the lives of the ordinary people," said Ramazan Bashardost, who called for a purge of corrupt officials. "The people are asking themselves: ’If these billions of dollars have been donated, which of our pains have they remedied, what ointment has been put on our wounds?'"

Mr Karzai also acknowledged this morning that his administration had been naive in its plans to wipe out Afghanistan's opium trade. He said it would take up to 15 years to wean his country from poppy-farming, the first stage of heroin production.

More than 2 million people, 8.7 per cent of the population, work in the country's poppy fields. Although the land area used to farm opium reduced by 21 per cent last year, the country's overall yield fell by just 2.5 per cent, to 4,100 tonnes, according to the UN. Opium brings $2.7 billion (£1.5 billion) to Afghanistan each year and accounts for 52 per cent of the country's GDP.

"I was quite naive. Three years ago I thought we were going to destroy poppies this year and that’s it," Mr Karzai told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "But no, it is a real economy, there are people depending on it. It will take time to develop alternatives."

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