On March 31, 2009 an International Conference on Afghanistan (subtitled: The Afghanistan Conference 2009: A Comprehensive Strategy in a Regional Context) was held in the World Forum Convention Center in The Hague where members of the international community discussed the future of Afghanistan. The one-day conference, hosted by the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the United Nations and the government of Afghanistan, followed up on several earlier conferences. The conference took place shortly after the conference in Moscow which was organized by the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation on March 27, 2009 with the presence of junior ministers of Iran and the United States. Shortly thereafter the summit of government leaders of the NATO was held. The conference in The Hague was attended by delegations from 73 countries and chaired by the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and as co-chairs special UN emissary Kai Eide and the Afghan foreign minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta. The organisation of the event was realized within three weeks. Background The conference in The Hague followed a year after the NATO summit in Bucharest and little more than a year after the big donor conference for Afghanistan in Paris. In 2010, the period in which the international community had come to agree during a conference in London to follow a mutual strategy (called the Afghanistan Compact) with the Afghan government had come to agree to follow a mutual strategy would end. Discussions Dutch foreign minister Maxime Verhagen stated that the conference in The Hague was an opportunity to restate and intensivate the engagement of the international community in Afghanistan. Therefore, all countries were invited which were involved with Afghanistan, ISAF partners, neighboring countries but also countries which were essential for logistical support of amongst others the ISAF mission. In total 73 countries of which only one (Uzbekistan) declined the invitation. According to Verhagen the conference would look ahead to the near future in a "constructive-critical way" The discussion should focus on the fields in which the international community and the Afghan government had resulted in success and those in which success wasn't achieved and how they could be improved. The conference also focused on the fight against international terrorism. According to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Afghanistan and Pakistan should be seen as "a single strategic concern". The border area with Pakistan was seen as the "nerve center" of the extremists who plotted the September 11 attacks, the Madrid