No troops for Afghanistan: India

New Delhi

16 March 2009

India had no plans to send troops to Afghanistan, a minister in the ruling Congress-led UPA Government said, putting to rest speculation about New Delhi's future course of action as the United States and its NATO allies reviewed their strategy on the war in Afghanistan.

"No. We have always ruled it out," Minister of State of External Affairs Anand Sharma said in an interview to this newspaper. He iterated that India would stay the course and continue to contribute to development of the war-ravaged Afghanistan.

Mr Sharma said India was undertaking projects to build power grid infrastructure, strategic road links, educational institutions and information technology centres in Afghanistan and "this work we will continue [to do]".

"We are watching the developments there. We will do everything possible for rebuilding

of that country and for its development, including creation of infrastructure, capacity

building and human resource development," he added.

The minister's remarks came amid suggestions by Indian Army chief General Deepak

Kapoor that the political leadership had to decide whether to go beyond providing soft

assistance and consider Indian military presence in Afghanistan.

South Block sources were to quick to point out that Foreign Secretary Shivshankar

Menon had let US National Security Adviser General James Jones and other officials in

the Barack Obama Administration know that military strategies alone were not enough to

bring stability to the region.

Mr Sharma sought to caution the international community on talks with the Taliban,

alluding to reports that Taliban leader Mullah Omar had agreed to send his

representatives for participating in the Saudi Arabia-mediated negotiations aimed at

ending the war in Afghanistan.

"There has to be a robust and well-coordinated response both in the regional and in the

global context and we cannot be selective in our approach. This ideology of terror and

violence has to be opposed [and] confronted. Beyond that we are neither involved in any

such process nor are we aware of [or] privy to [it]," he said, when asked about reports

that some of the preliminary talks by Saudi intelligence chief Prince Muqrin bin Abdul

Aziz took place in New Delhi.

The minister said Afghanistan's stabilisation and meaningful return to peace also

depended on the dismantling of the infrastructure of the terrorists and the fanatic forces

in neighbouring Pakistan, amplifying India's reservations about the merits of reaching

out to the Islamist organisation.

"Taliban is not confined only to Afghanistan. There is definitely some sustenance and

support which they get from across the border," Mr Sharma elaborated.