Focus on Afghanistan crisis, connectivity at India-Central Asia dialogue today

Tribune News Service

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New Delhi, December 18

All five Central Asian Foreign Ministers arrived here by Saturday evening, giving a miss to the Organisation of Islamic Countries meet in Islamabad being attended by Special Envoys to Afghanistan from the US, the UK, France, China, Russia, Germany and the EU. The agenda of the OIC meet is aid for Afghanistan.

The New Delhi meeting of the Central Asian Foreign Ministers with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar as the host will cover a wider palette. It will also firm up the invitation to the leaders of the five countries as Guests of Honour for the Republic Day parade.

On Afghanistan, they are likely to pick up the threads of the November 10 meeting of NSAs hosted by Ajit Doval which was attended by his counterparts from all five Central Asian countries, Iran and Russia. The focus would be more on the terror overspill and drug trafficking from Afghanistan.

A US report on terrorism released on Friday corroborated India’s apprehensions of terrorism from Af-Pak territory. It noted that many terrorist groups with regional or transnational ambitions continued to operate freely from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Countries like Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, whose diaspora extends into Afghanistan, are unhappy with the rough treatment given to Afghan leaders sharing their ethnicity. Their interest in having a representative government intersects with that of India.

They will also discuss connectivity which is of vital interest to them as most of these countries are double-landlocked. Also, India wants to expand cooperation with the energy-rich Central Asian nations that have oil, gas and uranium reserves and other rare metals.

All Foreign Ministers — Mukhtar Tileuberdi (Kazakhstan), Sirojiddin Muhriddin (Tajikistan), Ruslan Kazakbaev (Kyrgyzstan), Abdulaziz Kamilov (Uzbekistan) and Rashid Meredov (Turkmenistan) — have arrived for the third edition of India’s dialogue with the five Central Asian countries.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE MEET

• Recent events in Afghanistan have reinforced importance of Central Asian nations
• Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan share borders with war-torn Afghanistan
• Also, Central Asian nations are energy-rich with vast oil, gas and uranium reserves and other rare metals