Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced that his country wants to take responsibility for its own security by 2014 in his opening speech at an international conference on the future of Afghanistan.

The conference was attended Tuesday by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski.

“Afghan forces should start taking over the security responsibilities in certain areas of the country by the end of this year and should be in control of all military operations by the end of 2014,” read the final communique from the conference, according to Reuters.

During Poland's presidential campaign, the eventual winner, Bronisław Komorowski, announced that as president he would look to start pulling Polish troops out of Afghanistan by 2011, with a view to ending the Polish mission there by 2012.

Poland currently has about 3,000 troops in Afghanistan.

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen declared though that the alliance would not withdraw from Afghanistan immediately after handing over control of the country, but would provide the Afghan forces with “support.”

“The handover of responsibility will be realized gradually, on the basis of a sober assessment of the political and security situation, so that it will be irreversible,” said Mr Rasmussen.

Ms Clinton said that the “world was with Afghanistan” and that the planned start of withdrawal of US forces in 2011 did not mean a reduction in US involvement in the country.

The US Secretary of State also said the international community expected results in anti-corruption efforts and that the Afghan government still had “a lot of work to do."