NEW DELHI, Feb 26: Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai arrived in New Delhi on Tuesday to solicit support from India’s political and business chiefs to build a new Afghanistan.

He was accompanied by a 30-strong political and economic delegation, including 15 ministers, for the two-day visit.

Karzai is due to address top business executives and meet Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, President K.R. Narayanan, Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who arrives on Wednesday.

New Delhi backed the Northern Alliance, now the main force in the interim Afghan regime, against the Taliban government.

India, which has close cultural and historic ties to Afghanistan and is home to up to 30,000 Afghan refugees, has already announced $100 million in aid for the impoverished nation ravaged by decades of war.

Key Afghan ministers have family here and Karzai, a little-known Pakhtoon tribal chief before he was catapulted from exile to power by the US war on terrorism, studied politics at a university in the Indian hill town of Shimla two decades ago.

Karzai’s delegation includes two vice-chairmen of his administration and his foreign, commerce and agriculture ministers, who are expected to meet some of their Indian counterparts in separate discussions.

Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, Interior Minister Younous Qanooni and Deputy Defence Minister Ahmad Rashid Dostum have visited New Delhi to renew the close relationship that existed before the Taliban regime seized power in 1996.

India’s ties with the new regime were evident last month when Afghanistan’s airline flew to New Delhi from Kabul on its first commercial international flight since the United Nations lifted a flight ban. New Delhi is also training 20 Afghan diplomats.—Reuters