By IANS,
New Delhi : Afghan National Security Adviser (NSA) Rangin Dadfar Spanta has made it clear that Pakistan can’t dictate Afghanistan’s foreign policy and underlined that nobody in his country wanted a reduction in India’s engagement.
“Pakistan has to accept Afghanistan’s sovereignty and to the fact that it has friendship and bilateral relationships with other countries,” Spanta, who returned home after a 24-hour visit to India Wednesday, told CNN-IBN.
“Nobody in Afghanistan would support reduction in Indian engagement and its role in reconstruction and supporting capacity building in Afghanistan. This is the desire of Afghan people,” he said when asked about Pakistan’s manoeuvres to squeeze India out of Afghanistan.
Spanta, also a former foreign minister, sought a bigger role for India in Afghanistan during his meetings with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna and his Indian counterpart Shivshankar Menon.
Spanta repudiated any attempt by Pakistan to dictate the Afghan policy, especially its relationship with India.
“If it is in areas like economic cooperation, trade and transit, then it is okay. Afghanistan can be strategically important to all friends that are ready to work with it,” he said when asked about Pakistan’s Army Chief Ashfaq Kayani’s description of Afghanistan as part of Pakistan’s strategic depth.
“But, to dictate Afghan policy or Afghan polity and think as if there are limitations in Afghan’s sovereignty, the proud people of Afghanistan will not allow other countries to think like that,” he stressed.
Spanta backed India’s initiative in enhancing trade and people-to-people contacts in the region.
Spanta also assured New Delhi that the Afghan government was observing red lines, advocated by India and endorsed at the July 20 Kabul conference, while pursuing the re-integration of the Taliban, sources said.
Spanta conveyed that the Afghan government never started any talks with the Haqqani network that is suspected by India of having a hand in the attack on its embassy in Kabul and in assaults on Indian personnel in Afghanistan.
New Delhi has made it clear that only those elements of the Taliban who renounce violence, cut off links with terrorism and accept the Afghan constitution should be accommodated.
India has pledged $1.3 billion for multifarious reconstruction projects ranging from building roads, dams and power stations to the construction of the Afghan parliament building and grassroot development projects.
In his meetings with Indian interlocutors, Spanta assured India that the Afghan government was keeping communication lines open with the Pakistan army with a view to ending cross-border terrorism. He stressed that the Afghan government has good relations with the civilian dispensation in Islamabad, “but because the army is a very special institution in Pakistan, so our civilian leader President (Hamid) Karzai has to talk to this institution to seek cooperation and collaboration of the Pakistan army.”