Building ties with India is in interest of Afghanistan: Karzai

[LETHALFORCE]

Building ties with India is in interest of Afghanistan: Karzai


Building ties with India is in interest of Afghanistan: Karzai
PTI
Wednesday, May 06th, 2009 AT 1:05 PM
Tags: Pakistan, Indo-Afghan ties, Hamid Karzai, India


WASHINGTON: Dismissing Pakistan's strong objection to the growing Indo-Afghan ties, President Hamid Karzai has said Kabul would continue to build on the relations with New Delhi which were in the interest of the war-ravaged country.
Stating that Afghanistan is a sovereign State, he added that his Government has the right to decide what is in the best national interest of the country and no one can and none so far have been able to dictate those terms to its people.
"We fought the Soviets. We fought the British. We fought everybody else because we wanted to keep this sense that we are independent, our sovereignty. For that reason, we are requesting our friends in Pakistan that we will have relations with India because we are sovereign, and we will have relations with India because it's in our interest," the Afghan President said at the prestigious Brookings Institute.
However, Karzai, who is here for a trilateral summit also involving US President Barack Obama and his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari, said Afghanistan's relations with India will never be against its ties with Pakistan or at the expense of relations with Islamabad.
"It will be a contribution of relations to Pakistan," he said responding to a question from Bruce Riedel, an ex-CIA official and co-chair of US inter-agency panel that formulated the new Af-Pak policy in March.
Pakistan, in particular its army and the ISI, has been wary of increasing relationship between India and Afghanistan.
In no uncertain terms, its officials have told the US and also the Karzai Government that it does not want Indian presence in Afghanistan as Islamabad feels that such a scenario would be a threat to the security of Pakistan.
Both Afghanistan and the United States have rejected Islamabad's contention in this regard.
Hailing New Delhi for its role in the development of Afghanistan post-Taliban, Karzai said, "India has contributed to the reconstruction of Afghanistan over USD 1 billion in significantly important projects, in transmission lines for electricity, a very important road, the building the Afghan Parliament and all that, a very powerful relationship."
Identifying India as an old Afghan friend for many, many years, Karzai said New Delhi has contributed massively to Afghanistan in the past seven years.
"It gives us 1,000 scholarships each year for Afghan graduates, 500 graduates in higher studies, 500 vocation trainings. We have had as a result of that, in the past five years, hundreds of Afghans return to serve their country," Karzai said.

 

[thakur_ritesh]

karzai is a india yes man, a man who has had a part of his education in india and someone who has deep rooted contacts with not only the GoI but with host of other people who might not be a part of the actual government setup but are people who influence the GoI quite a lot. when he was instated as the president of afghanistan, it was a dream come true for the indian establishment which prior to that had to deal with a very hostile taliban government in the latter half of the 90s. in fact india being accepted so openly in the past 7-8yrs in afghanistan has had to do a lot with karzai, other than the northern alliance of course, who as a matter of fact has viewed india as one of the countries which will help him in further his hold on the country and so we did with investments in that country reaching well over 1b usd. karzai having said what he did might come as music to ears but this music has been played on for years now and this statement gathers importance for two reasons, one is to make obama and pakistan understand that india will play a role in that country whether it is of their liking or not and the other message which is more important is to the new president if there is one post the presidential elections to be held there. the message is that india has a place in the scheme of things and have a stake in the future nation building process of that country and what has been built upon so far should not be allowed to let go by getting influenced by outside forces. a true friend indeed karzai is of india and if he were to be reinstated as the next president i would for one look forward to him being invited as a guest of honor in one of our republic day parades.


with his exit if that were to happen would certainly not be the best of the news for india and would be a sure testing time of our diplomacy but that is not to say things would change dramatically for we have developed some good relations with the parliamentarians of afghanistan but those would certainly require a lot of refining and more work would need to put in place and if i am not wrong india has already started working on that policy so as far as one can see things in the foreseeable future it does look that our interests will be well met in that country and for the moment pakistan will just have to sit out in one corner licking its wounds.

 

[LETHALFORCE]

Afghanistan has lot more to gain maintaining good relations with India than Pakistan, with India they will develop trade, infrastructure and progress with Pakistan they will get terror and war .