India backs Afghanistan peace talks but remains wary of Taliban-ISI links
NEW DELHI: As the Taliban sat down in Doha for its first real and direct
engagement with the Afghan government for peace, India participated in
the inaugural session of the negotiations with foreign minister S
Jaishankar underscoring the need for addressing the issue of violence in
the war-torn country and its neighbourhood.
Without naming
Pakistan, or any Pakistan based terror group with links to the Afghan
Taliban, Jaishankar said that India's expectation was that the soil of
Afghanistan is never used for anti-India activities.
The
intra-Afghan Afghan talks followed the US peace deal with the Taliban in
February that bypassed the elected government in Kabul. Unlike then,
when India’s ambassador to Qatar participated in the event, a
senior-level delegation led by MEA’s joint secretary for PAI
(Pakistan-Afghanistan-Iran) division J P Singh travelled to Doha on this
occasion to attend the inaugural ceremony.
Explained: What Taliban-Afghan talks mean for India
In
his virtual address, while calling for immediate and comprehensive
ceasefire, Jaishankar said that India’s policy on Afghanistan had been
consistent. He said India believed any peace process must be Afghan-led,
Afghan-owned and Afghan-controlled, has to respect the national
sovereignty and territorial integrity of Afghanistan and preserve the
progress made in the establishment of a democratic Islamic Republic in
Afghanistan.
Significantly, he added, the interests of minorities,
women and vulnerable sections of society must be preserved and the issue
of violence across the country and its neighbourhood had to be
effectively addressed.
India remains concerned about the Taliban’s
links with Pakistan’s ISI and efforts by the latter to use the Haqqani
network to target India’s interests in the country, although Pakistan is
said to no longer enjoy the kind of influence over the Taliban as in
the past. As Jaishankar highlighted in his speech, India has been a
major development partner of Afghanistan with over 400 completed
projects in all 34 provinces of Afghanistan.
Islamabad, which
facilitated the US-Taliban peace agreement earlier, patted itself on the
back Saturday with its foreign minister S M Qureshi, in his address on
the occasion, saying the negotiations were a fruit of Pakistan and
Afghanistan's "combined efforts".
India has been wary of the links
with Taliban of terror groups like JeM and LeT. A UN report had said
earlier this year that LeT and JeM fighters were " co-located" with
Taliban in Afghanistan. After another round of counter-terrorism
dialogue this week, India and the US had in a joint statement this
underlined the urgent need for Pakistan to take "immediate, sustained,
and irreversible" action to ensure that no territory under its control
was used for terrorist attacks, and to expeditiously bring to justice
the perpetrators of such attacks, including 26/11 Mumbai and Pathankot.
Jaishankar
also referred to the millennia old relationship between India and
Afghanistan which, he said, had withstood the test of time.
According
to MEA, the minister’s participation was in response to an invitation
extended to him by the deputy PM Prime and foreign minister of Qatar
Mohammad bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani.
Jaishankar also wished
for the success of the intra-Afghan negotiations in delivering to the
people of Afghanistan what, he said, they have longed for - a peaceful
and prosperous future in an independent and sovereign nation.
Comments