New Delhi, July 21 (IANS) US Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke reached here Wednesday for discussions over the role of India and other regional powers in stabilizing Afghanistan, a day after an international conference in Kabul cleared the handing over of security of the violence-hit nation to domestic forces by 2014.
Holbrooke, US President Barack Obama’s Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan (AfPak), flew in here from Kabul.
He is likely to meet National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon Wednesday evening and discuss the evolving AfPak situation with Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao Thursday.
Holbrooke’s visit comes against the backdrop of Pakistan’s increasingly prominent role in the reintegration plan of the Afghan government, a development India has viewed with unease.
India pitched for ‘an Afghan-led, Afghan-owned’ peace and reintegration process at the Kabul conference Tuesday and said this process needs to be inclusive and transparent.
Recently, after his discussions with Indian ambassador to US Meera Shankar in Washington, Holbrooke had said: ‘India has a very real role in the region for historic and strategic reasons. They can play an important role in resolving these issues.’
The recent foreign-minister level discussions between India and Pakistan in Islamabad are likely to figure in Holbrooke’s discussions.
The talks between Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna and his Pakistani counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi July 15 ended on a bitter note on issues of terror and Jammu and Kashmir without any visible roadmap for dialogue.
With the July 2011 deadline for beginning phased withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan in mind, the US wants India and Pakistan to continue their dialogue as it will deprive Islamabad of an excuse not to concentrate on targeting the insurgents’ sanctuaries inside its territory.
This will be the first visit by Holbrooke to India since he annoyed many in New Delhi in March with his reported remarks in Washington that India was not the target of coordinated attack in Kabul Feb 26 that killed nine Indians despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
The remarks were seen by many here as the US giving in to Pakistan’s sustained lobbying for India to scale down its reconstruction activities in Afghanistan.
However, since then the Obama administration has been consistently and overtly lauding India’s role in Afghanistan and has even sought to jointly work together on many projects.
