Tribute to 'heavy price' nation paid in conflict 'Zero possibility': Dr Zalmai Roussol is confident the Taliban won't make a widespread return to Afghanistan once foreign troops exit. Afghanistan's Foreign Minister arrived in Sydney on his first visit to Australia on Wednesday, summing up his primary mission here with one word: "Thanks." "You came to help the Afghan people in a very difficult area of Afghanistan, which is Oruzgan province, and you have paid a heavy price, not only in your taxpayers' money but in the blood of your soldiers," Zalmai Rassoul said. With Australian troops preparing for near-total withdrawal next year, Kabul wanted "long-term friendship" based on economic and educational ties as well as continuing military training. Dr Rassoul defended his country against fears that rampant corruption and cronyism would open the way for warlords to regain supremacy once foreign troops had left. "I don't think there is any more the kind of warlord that there was before the war," he said. There are influential people ... But the Afghan people have changed a lot in the last 10 years. I don't say that everything is going to be perfect but we are on the right track. Dr Rassoul said Kabul was slowly building the kind of institutions, particularly the judiciary, that would better resist corruption but conceded "corruption is always a problem of post-conflict countries." He said this was exacerbated in Afghanistan's case by "three decades of war and no institutions ... and the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars poured into our country after 2001." Asked if the Taliban might succeed in returning once foreign forces withdrew, he declared it a "zero possibility." Dr Rassoul defended the country's record on women's rights, saying "you need to compare where we are today with the year 2000" when, under the Taliban, women "were not considered human beings." Eight million children were now at school, he said, of whom 40 per cent were girls. "The main progress in my opinion is the mentality of the Afghan people" he said. " I think that it is an irreversible process. Dr Rassoul is due to meet senior politicians from both sides in Canberra on Thursday before travelling to Melbourne to open an exhibition of cultural treasures from the Museum of Kabul.