External affairs minister S.M. Krishna met Afghan President Hamid Karzai early Tuesday evening while Prime Minister Manmohan Singh hosted a dinner for the visiting dignitary.
Apart from the strategic partnership, New Delhi and Kabul signed two other agreements, a memorandum of understanding each for cooperation in the fields of mining and hydrocarbons, thus lending a new dimension to economic ties.
Shortly after signing the strategic partnership agreement, the PM said: “We will do all within our means to help Afghanistan.”
He said they discussed terrorism which “threatens our entire region, and no country can remain immune to its lethal effects”.
The Prime Minister also stated unequivocally: “The people of Afghanistan have suffered enough. They deserve to live in peace and decide their future themselves, without outside interference, coercion and intimidation.”
He also assured Kabul that “India will stand by the people of Afghanistan as they prepare for their governance and security after the withdrawal of international forces in 2014.”
President Karzai said Afghanistan “recognises the danger this region is facing through terrorism and radicalism that are being used an instrument of state policy against civilians and innocents of our countries”.
The PM said the strategic partnership also “creates an institutional framework for our future cooperation in the fields of political and security cooperation, trade and economic cooperation, capacity building and education and social. cultural, civil society and people-to-people relations”.
The forging of even closer ties between India and Afghanistan comes at a time when Kabul and Islamabad are experiencing a particularly rough phase with Afghanistan accusing its neighbour of being behind the killing of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, chief peace negotiator between the Afghan government and the Taliban. India, too, has been repeatedly asking Islamabad to put an end to cross-border terrorism. So the strategic partnership document is careful to state that it is “not directed against any other state or group of states”.
It is to be implemented under the framework of a partnership council to be headed by the foreign ministers of the two countries who will hold summit-level meetings annually.