December 20, 2001	Thursday	Shawwal 4, 1422

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ISLAMABAD, Dec 19: Pakistan is well geared to provide its services in infrastructure, agriculture, demining, energy, water drainage, fruit, mineral export and transportation of goods.

However, it will not be making capital investments in the war-torn country because of poor state of domestic economy and continuous heavy burden of Afghan refugees, said the federal minister for communications, Javed Ashraf Qazi, in an interview to Dawn.

“Pakistan has a major role to play in Afghanistan because no matter what happens, their dependence on Pakistan for quite some time is going to be pretty much there.”

The minister said Pakistan was very well geared to provide infrastructure facilities through a very excellent road and rails running upto Chamman in Balochistan and Torkhum in the NWFP.

Through Chamman, Pakistan can access Kandahar, Herat and Ghazni and Kabul via Kandahar, Jalalabad, Kabul and beyond through Torkhum.

“So, basically, Pakistan has the best infrastructure to carry any material required for the reconstruction of Afghanistan. The only problem is within Afghanistan, where the infrastructure has been destroyed over a number of years. The Kandahar-Herat road is in a bad shape and same is the case with a road from Torkhum to Kabul”, Mr Qazi said and added that the roads would have to repaired to access other areas.

The minister said any kind of material could be brought through Pakistani ports because of spare capacity both at Karachi Port and Port Qasim. “We can accommodate any number of ships and wagons to carry any kind of material and we have got spare wagons and provide ships on required basis.”

Mr Qazi did not see any problem in reviving the telecommunication system in Afghanistan, saying that “previously, we had taken care of this facility after Russia had departed that has once again been destroyed to a very large extent.”

He stated that the Afghan economy had totally been ruined. “There is no infrastructure to carry whatever they produce and they produce very little. But they have an inherent capability of producing more because it’s a large country full of mountains and minerals.”

Pakistan was well placed to assist its western neighbour in the agriculture sector, he said, adding that “we have similar crops and terrain proven to be very successful in our arid zones. We can put our experts through to similar terrain in Afghanistan, and introduce crops to use their experience.”

He said Islamabad could help rebuild Afghanistan’s water drainage and electric distribution and power generation systems.

Replying to a question, the minister said, “Capital is going to be invested by rest of the world. This Afghan-rebuild programme would be financed by the donors, the European Union, the United States, Japan and others. They are collecting funds. We are only extending our expertise and knowledge. Our proximity with Afghanistan will make it cheaper to employ experts and workers from here.”

About demining, Mr Qazi said: “We have been one of the major countries in the demining operations in Kuwait after the Gulf war. So our engineers have a lot of experience in demining. We can always extend that knowledge if and when required to demine Afghanistan.”

Answering another question whether the Afghanistan’s interim government dominated by the Northern Alliance would allow Pakistan’s army engineers to launch demining operations, the minister said: “It’s upto them. If they want mines removed, they should request us.”

Besides laying oil and gas pipelines, he expected that Pakistan could play a role in oil exploration in the war-ravaged country though prospects were not very bright.

He said the Oil and Gas Development Company (OGDCL) had the capability to enter into joint ventures and that multinational companies operating in Pakistan could also extend their operations. “But this is a big game in which a lot of big players are going to be interested and Afghanistan is not going to just gift it to anybody. The companies would have to compete and make best offers.”