Monday, May 26, 2014
Kabul (BNA) The Council of Ministers (CM) in its weekly meeting with President Hamid Karzai on the chair, called for early completion of the construction project of Paghman Palace, the presidential palace said as quoted by Bakhtar News Agency on Sunday.
It also noted that the reconstruction process of the giant Buddha Statues in Bamyan has been monitoring. The president in the meeting also briefed the participants about the fourth Conference on Interaction on Confidence-Building Measure in Asia (CICA) summit held in China aimed at building confidence among the Asian states.
In his address at the CICA summit, President Karzai besides emphasizing for enhancing cooperation among the neighboring states and regional countries termed terrorism and extremism as threat before peace and stability in the region and called for collective cooperation to overcome the menace. The president also stressed for boosting cooperation in the fields of trade, transit, transport and energy among the countries in the region.
On the oath taking ceremony of the next elected president, the president stated that the independent election commission as per schedule would announce the final results of the runoff on July 22 which coincides on 24th of Ramadan and therefore, the oath taking ceremony of the newly elected president will be held on August 2 in a special ceremony at the Presidential Palace. In the meeting, the minister for interior presented his report about the necessary coordination among the security organs and said that the last week the ministries for defense and interior organized the seminars of security officials wherein the challenges and weak points of the security in the first round of the elections were discussed in order to take necessary security measures for the second round of the polls. Stressing for coordination among the security organs during the runoff, the minister for defense said that essential security measures had been put on place and it is expected that the representatives of security organs including officials from the directorate for local organs to review the security situation within the next 10 days and report to the presidential office. Later on the council of ministers praised the Kam Air airline services on transporting the injured and martyrs of the security personnel free of charge to their provinces and has tasked the Hajj Committee to review over the share of the airline company for taking Hajjis to Saudi Arabia. In the meeting, based on the proposal of the ministry for information and culture the construction of protective wall for Jam Minaret in Ghor province was discussed and the Council of Ministers assigned the ministry for finance to allocate 10m Afg on urgent basis for the project. The Council of Ministers also tasked the ministry for information and culture to monitor the reconstruction process of Buddha Statues which has been going on by COMOS agency of Germany.
At the end of the meeting, the foreign minister briefed the participants about three international agreements all the trio were endorsed in the meeting.
