UNITED NATIONS -- U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan will attend next week's Tokyo meeting of nations weighing pledges to help Afghanistan rebuild after more than two decades of war, the United Nations said on Monday.

Annan was considering going to India and Pakistan on the way back from Tokyo, but diplomats said that while Pakistan welcomed such a visit, New Delhi had not responded to the request and was expected to turn it down.

U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said he would have "no comment" on whether Annan would return directly to New York after his Tokyo visit and had "nothing to announce yet" concerning the secretary-general's return date.

More than a million troops have deployed along India and Pakistan's shared border after a guerrilla attack on India's parliament last month. Annan has urged the nuclear-armed neighbors to resolve their differences through peaceful means.

The two-day Tokyo pledging conference is to be co-chaired by Japan, the United States, the European Union and Saudi Arabia. It is scheduled for next Monday and Tuesday.

Haji Mohammad Mohaqiq, planning minister in Afghanistan's new interim government, has estimated his country would need $45 billion over 10 years to rebuild. That was three to four times higher than most Western estimates so far, signaling that Kabul could face an uphill struggle in Tokyo.

The United Nations, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank are developing their own projections of the central Asian Nation's aid needs, to be unveiled in Tokyo.

Mark Malloch-Brown, head of the U.N. Development Program, estimated last month that $9 billion would be needed for Afghanistan over the next five years, Reuters reported.