US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, says Barack Obama has officially designated Afghanistan as a 'major non-Nato ally' of America Reuters

The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, has declared Afghanistan a "major non-Nato ally" of the US in a strong show of support before a conference that aims to raise billions of dollars of aid for the war-ravaged country.

The announcement by Clinton during a brief visit to Kabul means Afghanistan will join a small, rather disparate group of 14 countries, including Israel, Japan, the Philippines, Bahrain and Pakistan, which hold the privileged status. This status allows for streamlined military co-operation with the US, with access to weapons and training among other advantages.

The extent of US military spending in Afghanistan already put it effectively on a par with some other "major non-Nato allies", but with US troops expected to be mostly home by the end of 2014, Clinton described the formal label as a sign of long-term commitment. It is the first country awarded the status by Barack Obama's administration.

"We see this as a powerful commitment to Afghanistan's future," she told a joint news conference, after a breakfast meeting with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai. "We are not even imagining abandoning Afghanistan."

Clinton and Karzai then flew to Tokyo, where Karzai will seek promises of up to $4bn a year in development aid, to match a similar amount of funding for the police and army.

Clinton said she would hold a joint meeting with the Pakistani and Afghan foreign ministers on the sidelines of the Tokyo meeting, which could help boost a largely moribund effort to set up talks with the Taliban.

Although Clinton noted that security is improving, Afghanistan's porous border, the resilience of the insurgency and slow progress in building the capacity of the Afghan police and army mean that a negotiated settlement is widely seen as a strong hope of ending the conflict and staving off possible civil war.

The Tokyo conference is also expected to address the massive problem of corruption in Afghanistan, last year ranked fourth most corrupt country in the world.

Up to $1bn of the $8bn donated to Afghanistan over the past eight years has been lost to corruption, Huguette Labelle, the chairwoman of the anti-fraud group Transparency International, warned in a recent editorial in the New York Times.

While there have been a string of high-profile graft cases in recent years, including a $900m banking scandal, no high-profile convictions or sentences have been handed down.

Donors will lay out at the conference a "framework of accountability" that will require Kabul to make progress on issues such as women's rights and rule of law in return for the funds it gets. Clinton said she believed the government was sincere about tackling fraud.

"This is an issue the government and the people of Afghanistan want action on, and we want to ensure they are successful," she told the news conference, under vast trees in a garden at the heart of the presidential palace.