Thank you, honourable member.
On the question of reconciliation, as I stated in my brief statement, those are exactly the concerns many have had, including me, personally, not necessarily as a spokesman of the government but as an Afghan, first and foremost.
President Karzai has been very clear in his definition of the reconciliation process, and that is that reconciliation will be used as a strategy to help in the ongoing war we are fighting against terrorism in the counter-insurgency. To that extent, it will be aimed at winning over some of the people who are not tied irrevocably with terrorism, with al-Qaeda, and who can be won over by a political strategy.
He has also been very clear that reconciliation will not come at the cost of changing the Afghan constitution and reversing the achievements and the democratization process we have had in the past nine years.
I think the kinds of concerns Afghans have had, and the ones Mrs. Jalal raised, are exactly along the same lines. They are answered by those clarifications from President Karzai. At least as far as President Karzai is concerned, in his definition of reconciliation, it should and must not come at the cost of Afghanistan's achievements. Inasmuch as it's important to win this war, to win it through political as well as military strategy, it's more important in the minds of the Afghan people to safeguard our own achievements and not compromise them.
On the question of corruption, it's a problem. There is no question. But I think the perceptions of corruption, even though they do in a lot of cases relate to reality, should be seen as one of the challenges we have together. The last thing we should do, really, is enter into a kind of blame game. It will be so unhelpful that at the end of the day, not only will the problem of corruption not be addressed but we will lose momentum in some of the other areas where we have to work together.
I think, unfortunately, that this happened because this is a very logical and natural outcome for a country that had totally lost its state institutions and nine years ago suddenly became the recipient of one of the largest aid programs in history. This inevitably causes a lot of complications. Corruption is first and foremost a question of capacity. It's not really a question of culture. Other people have raised this, and it's absolutely wrong. It would have happened in Africa. It would have happened in Europe. It would have happened in any other part of the world if you had had a country like Afghanistan as it was nine years ago facing the situation we did.
So I think it should be seen as a problem we need to work on together.