US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said whoever wins Afghanistan's recent election will be expected to do more to address the country's problems.

美国国务卿希拉里克林顿称，不管谁赢得阿富汗最近的选举都将为该国存在的问题做出更多。

The US commander in Afghanistan has asked for more troops to be sent

Speaking to the BBC while in London, Mrs Clinton said the next leader needed to build better relationships with the US, the army and the Afghan people.

She said America's goal in Afghanistan was still to defeat al-Qaeda.

But the current US review of the conflict was "leading to some welcome clarity" on the best tactics, she said.

Mrs Clinton, currently on a European tour, told the BBC's Today programme that the US was "anxiously awaiting" the outcome of the presidential elections which were held in Afghanistan in August.

The results have been delayed over accusations¹ of fraud and malpractice（失职，行为不当）.

Incumbent² Hamid Karzai leads preliminary results with about 55% of the vote, considerably³ ahead of his nearest rival Abdullah Abdullah, who has 28%.

'Welcome clarity'

BBC diplomatic correspondent James Robbins said the secretary appeared unusually hesitant（迟疑的，踌躇的） when asked whether the US would be proud to stand beside Mr Karzai if he emerged as the winner.

She said simply that the president had been "very helpful on many fronts".

"We often overlook the progress made in Afghanistan, because of the serious challenges that still exist," she said.

"But we are very clear that if this election results in him being re-elected, there must be a new relationship between him and the people of Afghanistan, between his government and governments which are supporting the efforts in Afghanistan to stabilise and secure the country."

Mrs Clinton said the next president would also have to do more to train and deploy⁴（配置，部署） Afghan forces to take over from foreign troops.

"It is a more complex picture than sometimes emerges from snapshot views. But clearly we expect more, we're going to be working towards more," she said.

President Barack Obama is currently undertaking⁵ a review of the US military involvement in Afghanistan and the wider region, eight years after the operation first began.

The commander of US forces in Afghanistan, Gen Stanley McCrystal, has formally requested a significant increase in troop numbers.

Mr Obama is reported to have ruled out troop cuts or a major scaling back of the US effort in Afghanistan, but it remains⁶ unclear whether he will approve a significant escalation⁷（扩大，增加） to an increasingly unpopular war.

Mrs Clinton described the review process as "a very thorough scrubbing" of US strategy which was "leading to some welcome clarity".

She said America's goal in the region was still "to achieve the goal of disrupting, dismantling⁸ and defeating al-Qaeda and its extremist allies" but that it was now adopting "a much more careful analysis of who actually is allied⁹ with（结盟） al-Qaeda".

"We want to be smart about how we are proceeding¹⁰. The lives that our young men and women, both American and British, have put at risk - and lost - are very much in our minds. We intend to get this as right as is humanely¹¹（富人情地，慈悲地） possible."

Mrs Clinton said many people had been paid or coerced¹²（强制，强迫） to fight with the extremists and that developing partnerships¹³ with such people would yield results, as has been the case in Iraq.

Late on Sunday, the New York Times quoted senior administration officials as saying the president was impatient and "not satisfied" with progress on developing civil institutions, the judiciary（司法部，法官） and security forces in Afghanistan.

The president's civilian¹⁴ goals had been largely un-met, the officials said.

Mr Obama announced in March he would deploy hundreds of civilians¹⁵ to work in the country but the officials told the paper that because of deteriorating¹⁶（恶化） security many aid workers could not travel outside the capital to advise farmers.