Afghanistan's national airline, Ariana Afghan Airways, has seen its first international flight in two years take-off from Kabul airport, destined for India.

A UN ban on Ariana international flights was imposed in November 1999 as part of sanctions against the Taleban after they refused to hand over Osama bin Laden.

The ban was lifted in January this year.

With only one jet operational it will be years before Ariana can rebuild its services.

But money held by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) on behalf of Afghanistan will provide a welcome boost to the country's aviation industry.

IATA is reported to be holding more than $20m of fees collected from airlines as payment for the right to fly over Afghan airspace, withheld while the Taleban were in power.

Important location

Dennis Terao, a senior director at IATA, told the BBC's World Business Report he believed talks over paying this money would happen soon.

"The monies do belong to the legitimate government of Afghanistan," he said.

"So I think IATA is, at this point, going through a due-diligence exercise to ensure that the funds are going to be released to the proper authorities.

"Afghanistan sits astride the optimum air route between Europe and South East Asia so it is a very strategically located country," Mr Terao added.

'Daunting challenge'

As the massive project to rebuild Afghanistan starts, the ability to transport freight by air will be vital.

Only one Ariana plane is now usable as many of their jets were damaged during US air strikes on the country.

The country's air traffic communications systems were also badly damaged.

Mr Terao described rebuilding Afghanistan's aviation industry as a "daunting challenge".

But he said IATA, Afghanistan's Ministry of Civil Aviation and the International Civil Aviation Organisation would work together to repair and upgrade the country's aviation infrastructure.

Damage over-estimated

IATA currently has staff in Afghanistan - at the invitation of the Ministry of Civil Aviation - assessing the satellite communication system that IATA had been contracted to install and which was commissioned earlier last year.

This system was critical for communications with the over-flying civil aviation aircraft.

"Preliminary reports indicate that the communication system that we had installed was largely undamaged and we should be able to have that up and running in fairly short order," he said.

"We had installations at five or six locations in Afghanistan and we understand that was again largely undamaged," he added.