NEW DELHI: India today said any peace initiative in Afghanistan should be Afghan-led and Afghan-owned and anything that points to the contrary should be removed from the process.
“We want an Afghan-led, Afghan-owned peace initiative in Afghanistan. We have no alternative, we should not obstruct what is happening but we had hoped and we still expect it will be an Afghan-led, Afghan-owned initiative,” Minister for External Affairs Salman Khurshid told reporters when asked about his reaction over proposed peace talks with the Taliban in Qatari capital Doha.
He said “anything that points to the contrary will be removed from the process and I am sure that the US also has the same view”.
Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai had cancelled a proposed security dialogue with US, upset over the move to hold talks with the Taliban.
Khurshid also said India had reservations about the Taliban all along.
Replying to a question about the visit of US Secretary of State John Kerry to India, Khurshid said he expects a positive outlook from him and termed him as an extremely experienced person who had helped India in many ways during the negotiations of Indo-US civil nuclear deal.
“He is an extremely experienced person who has known India in the past. He had come to India and interacted with the Indian government. He had also helped in many ways in the past. He had been negotiating the civil nuclear deal,” he said.
“We would expect a positive outlook he had for India when he was on opposition benches when the Democrats were not in government,” he said. -PTI
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