INTERVIEW - West must share blame for Afghan corruption - minister

By Peter Graff

KABUL (Reuters) - Western countries must share the blame for corruption in Afghanistan and should also give more credit to President Hamid Karzai's government for recent improvements in fighting it, the country's finance minister said.

A fraud-tainted election has wrecked Karzai's reputation among the countries that fund and defend his government, making his ties with the West the sourest of his eight-year rule.

Karzai is due to be inaugurated on Nov. 19, while U.S. President Barack Obama is in the final stages of deciding whether to send tens of thousands more troops to reinforce a nearly 110,000-strong international force.

Finance Minister Hazrat Omar Zakhilwal acknowledged Afghan corruption, but said Western leaders were driven by domestic politics to take a particularly harsh stance in recent months, distorting a record that in fact showed progress this year.

"No matter what the president does, no matter what his ministers do with respect to corruption, they will continue to say, 'well, the government's corrupt, the ministers are corrupt' and all that," Zakhilwal told Reuters in an interview.

"What it tells us right now is, no matter what we do against corruption it will never be acknowledged. It will continue to be a political statement," he said. "Good apples, bad apples are all thrown into one basket."

Zakhilwal cited his own ministry, which he said had increased government revenues by 60 percent this year by cracking down on tax evasion and customs fraud.

"That means corruption is certainly down. Big cases busted. People removed, prosecuted. That's a success. But the reflection in the statements is as if things have gotten worse, whereas the reverse is true: things have gotten better," he said.