A senior U.S. lawmaker said that Afghan President Hamid Karzai promised that he will respect the independence of anticorruption watchdogs.
Senator John Kerry, who visited Afghanistan earlier this week before heading to flood-hit Pakistan, said that he returned to Kabul on August 20 as Karzai told him he wanted to speak further about the corruption issue.
Kerry said that Karzai made his most explicit promise yet to empower two antigraft bodies in Afghanistan, where one study found that bribes are equal to a quarter of the country's entire gross domestic product (GDP).
compiled from agency reports