KABUL, March 24: French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine flew into Afghanistan on Sunday for talks with interim leader Hamid Karzai and offering Paris’s support for the six-month old administration.
The visit, according to the French foreign ministry, was to “underline our support for the interim Afghan authority and to signal our engagement for peace and reconstruction in this country”.
Vedrine was met at Kabul airport by his Afghan counterpart Abdullah Abdullah after he flew in aboard a French military plane from the neighbouring central Asian republic of Tajikistan.
As well as Karzai, who visited Paris on Feb 28, Vedrine met Interior Minister Yunus Qanooni and the UN’s special envoy to Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi.
He also inspected 520-odd French troops taking part in the 4,800-strong British-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
The prickly question of ISAF’s mandate, however, which Afghan and UN officials have asked to be prolonged beyond its scheduled expiry in June, was left off the agenda during talks with Karzai, Vedrine said.
But he did raise the issue of the twice-delayed return of Afghanistan’s former king, 87-year-old Zahir Shah, from exile in Italy.—AFP
