Afghanistan has asked India to supply lethal defence equipment to prevent terrorism 180513

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Defence & Security News - Afghanistan
 
 
Saturday, May 18, 2013 09:33 AM
 
Afghanistan has asked India to supply lethal defence equipment to prevent terrorism.
Afghanistan has asked India to supply lethal defence hardware as part of the intensified bilateral cooperation and even seemed to indicate that it would welcome troop deployment on its soil. Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai will be arriving here on Monday for a three-day visit, his second in six months, but at a crucial juncture with only a year left for the foreign troops pullout from Afghanistan.
     
Afghanistan has asked India to supply lethal defence hardware as part of the intensified bilateral cooperation and even seemed to indicate that it would welcome troop deployment on its soil. Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai will be arriving here on Monday for a three-day visit, his second in six months, but at a crucial juncture with only a year left for the foreign troops pullout from Afghanistan.
Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai will begin a three-day visit in India next week..
     

Vigorously batting for a stepped-up Indian role, Afghan ambassador to India Shaida Mohammad Abdali said, “Investment in the security of Afghanistan is in India’s interest, to prevent spillover effects of terrorism on Afghanistan”. He noted that while India had been training Afghan security personnel, it was not adequate to address the issues of a difficult security situation.

“Given the time, we are required to sit down and discuss the contours of our defence cooperation to ensure predictability,” he said, adding that current level of cooperation was hardly enough to “take preventive and pre-emptive action” against common threats.

India has so far been training Afghan security personnel only in Indian institutions. It has also supplied limited number of non-lethal equipment like jeeps and trucks, and plans to hand over transport helicopters. “So, we would like to have both lethal and non-lethal assistance to our forces in Afghanistan,” he said.

A more engaged defence cooperation is likely to be a major topic of discussion during Karzai’s visit, which will also see him travelling to Jalandhar to receive a doctorate from a universtiy.