India offers $50 mn plan to Karzai

Declaring that terrorism posed a "serious threat to civilised existence," India today offered any kind of support to Afghanistan in dealing with the problem and announced a slew of developmental projects and schemes worth $50 million for the war-ravaged country.

On a two-day visit to "renew" old ties between the two countries, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told a joint press conference after his talks with President Hamid Karzai that a "modern, democratic and prosperous" Afghanistan was essential for the stability of the region.

"India is ready to work with Afghanistan in this area," said Singh, the first Indian Prime Minister to visit Afghanistan in 29 years, after his one-on-one meeting with Karzai and the delegation-level talks covering security and reconstruction of the war-torn country.

The two countries also signed three accords covering areas of education, healthcare and agricultural research in the presence of Singh and Karzai.

Noting that he had extensive discussions on how to strengthen bilateral co-operation, Singh said the talks also covered the "problem of terrorism that is afflicting the region and the world."

"We discussed the terrorist threats world-wide as also to Afghanistan and India. There is a convergence that terrorism anywhere and everywhere poses a serious threat to civilised existence," he said when asked whether the issue of resurgence of Taliban in Afghanistan figured in the talks. Karzai said the people of his country were hoping to see end of insurgency and terrorism.

"We see continuation of terrorist activities in Afghanistan against our people and reconstruction, against our ulema, our engineers, our doctors. We are sad about it," he said and hoped that all countries in the region would work together to see the elimination of the scourge.

He said Afghanistan had been talking to Pakistan with regard to the renewed threat from Taliban and there had been co-operation from that country in the anti-terrorist drive. "India, Pakistan and Afghanistan need to join hands to work together and strongly for peace of the region," he said.

Asked whether India would be ready to provide help in the area of security to Afghanistan, Singh said it was for this country to indicate what kind of help it needed and New Delhi was ready to offer it.

In a joint statement issued after the talks, India asserted that it remained fully supportive of the goal of a sovereign, stable, democratic and prosperous Afghanistan.

"Both leaders agreed that such an Afghanistan is also necessary for peace, security and stability in the region," it said.