Foreign secy, Afghan Deputy Foreign minister discuss ties

Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and Afghan Deputy Foreign Minister Hekmat Khalil Karzai on Tuesday discussed ways to step up bilateral cooperation, with Kabul signalling its willingness to boost defence and security cooperation with New Delhi.

Karzai, who reached New Delhi on Monday, is the second senior official from the Ashraf Ghani government to visit India in a week after President Ghani’s National Security Advisor Mohammad Hanif Atmar. Atmar met his Indian counterpart Ajit Doval and discussed issues related to “regional security, particularly terrorism, which threatens peace and stability of the region”.

Jaishankar and Karzai led the Indian and Afghan delegations in the foreign office consultations in New Delhi on Tuesday.

They reviewed the India-Afghanistan relations and explored ways to step up bilateral engagements with focus on New Delhi’s development assistance to the conflict-ravaged country. They also explored possibilities of taking India’s support to Afghan National Defence and Security Forces beyond providing training to personnel and supply of non-lethal weapons.

The back-to-back visits by Atmar and Karzai to New Delhi indicated willingness of the Ghani government to reverse its policy of relying much on Pakistan to buy peace from the Taliban.