NEW DELHI, Feb 27: Afghanistan’s interim leader Hamid Karzai said on Wednesday that his country would need international security contingents to weed out terrorism from there for quite some time more but clarified that no discussion had taken place with Indian officials in this regard during his two-day official tour to India.
“We did not discuss the issues of security or intelligence-sharing,” Karzai told a news conference after a round of talks with Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.
Answering a question in Urdu, as requested by an Indian journalist, he said India would be an important partner in the global campaign to help weed pout terrorism and religious extremism from everywhere.
Vajpayee said if Indian troops are needed to help secure Afghanistan “we will consider it favourably.”
Karzai said he had no problem with Indian troops coming, but said it is the United Nations, not his administration, that decides which countries contribute to the security force.
HE SAID: “As soon as Afghanistan is stable, and firm on our feet, and the fight against terrorism is finished, we will ask the international security forces to leave.”
Extending his hand of friendship, Vajpayee told Karzai that India stood shoulder to shoulder with Afghanistan in its hour of need.
He announced a ten-million-dollar grant to Afghanistan to meet immediate requirements and offered assistance in several areas as the two sides declared their resolve to totally eliminate terrorism and religious extremism in all their forms for peace and stability in the region.
Vajpayee, who had wide-ranging discussions with Karzai, also announced New Delhi’s decision to contribute to the World Bank-managed Afghan Reconstruction Trust Fund.
Vajpayee said he had assured Afghanistan that India was committed to providing humanitarian relief, reconstruction and rehabilitation assistance to the Afghan people.
The two leaders agreed that forces of terrorism and religious extremism must be totally eliminated for peace and stability and progress in the region.
Observing that people of Afghanistan had “suffered in unbelievable ways”, Karzai said: “We will continue to fight terrorism and religious extremism till the very absolute end.”