Afghanistan Times
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AT-KABUL: The participants of a tripartite meeting between Afghan, Iranian, and Indian officials stressed the important of Chabahar port for broadening of trade relations.
The Indian official talked about shipping of 100,000 tons of wheat from India to Afghanistan through Chabahar port soon.
Director General for Institute of Defense Studies and Analyses of India, Jayant Prasad said: “In the next few months we are going to shift 100,000 tons of wheat through Chahbahar port to Afghanistan.”
Speaking at a press conference titled “2nd Round of Afghanistan, India and Iran Trilateral Dialogue”, he said that we will improve the feasibility sooner by this big shipment of wheat through Chahbahar to Afghanistan.
This wheat is the donation of India to Afghan people, he added.
He said that “I think it provides the additional connectivity to Afghanistan it gives a second access to the sea.”
The existing access option is only through Karachi and time to time stoppage is there and time to time there is a political cost which is associated with it, he added.
Chabahar port is a joint Afghanistan, Iran and India projects. India, Iran and Afghanistan signed the historic three-nation deal in 2016 to develop the strategic port of Chabahar in Iran and build a transport-and-trade joint corridor and the mention three country can import and export to European countries through this corridor.
Responding to a question about non-participation of Pakistan in trilateral meeting, Mr. Prasad said that we have always said that we have official and non-official dialogue on Afghanistan with China and Russia and we would welcome a dialogue with Pakistan on the future of Afghanistan to construct positive outcome and bring peace and stability in this country.
He said that we would love it if Pakistan joins these discussions.
Without Pakistan’s cooperation to resolve problems in Afghanistan and given the past record of Pakistan since 2001, it is hard to imagine that the situation can be ameliorated with the ready cooperation of Pakistan, but it is even harder to imagine that without Pakistan the situation can be bettered, he elaborated.
He said that the Pakistan authorities have huge internal problems in dealing with Afghanistan and that is because Pakistan is simultaneously the army and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) tries to be the fire fighter as well as the in senders at the same time and these are to role which are in contradictory and that is the difficulty.
