Afghan President Hamid Karzai is to announce next month up to 17 areas which will witness the second round of handing security responsibility to local forces, moving ahead of total withdrawal from the country by 2014.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai is to announce next month up to 17 areas which will witness the second round of handing security responsibility to local forces, moving ahead of total withdrawal from the country by 2014.

Karzai "will announce the names of the provinces... at Istanbul conference on November 2," Abdul Khaliq Farahi, director of the Independent Directorate for Local Governance, told governors gathered at a meeting in Kabul.

"In the second phase of transition there are 17 provinces, but some of them (will transfer authority for) the entire province, others include districts," Farahi told AFP news agency later.

Istanbul conference would be attended by regional leader in a bid to end the war in the country.

Badakhshan, Badghis, Balkh, Daykundi, Ghazni, Ghor, Helmand, Herat, Kabul, Laghman, Nangarhar, Nimroz, Parwan, Samangan, Sar-i-pul, Takhar and Wardak provinces are likely to be announced by Karzai at a regional conference in Istanbul, said Farahi.

Seven of the provinces could be handed over in their entirety, with the rest seeing some districts phased over to national control.
Most of Herat and Kabul were already handed over to Afghan control in a first wave of transition in July, but some districts remain under NATO's remit.

 But questions remain over the handover and Farahi gave no indication about when the second phase of the transition would begin or how long it would take.