The Hindu : India should allow extension of oil pipeline: Karzai

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Mar 07, 2003

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India should allow extension of oil pipeline: Karzai

By Our Diplomatic Correspondent

NEW DELHI March 6. The Afghanistan President, Hamid Karzai, today hoped that New Delhi would consider extending the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan gas pipeline to India.

Addressing a business meeting, Mr. Karzai said that India should join the project (for which an agreement has been signed by the three countries) and "allow the pipeline to come here.'' ``We are very keen (on the India leg of the project),'' he said, but preferred not to get into the obvious India-Pakistan dimension of the issue. "The politics of it (the pipeline) I will leave out of this meeting.'' Interestingly, Mr. Karzai said that Kabul was working out a facility with Islamabad that would allow Indian goods to be transported to Afghanistan through Pakistan. Afghanistan and Pakistan already have a transit trade agreement. ``We are working on that (transport through Pakistan) and I hope we can succeed,'' he said during the interactive session.

Mr. Karzai made it clear that he did not see any link between the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan. "We don't see any relation between the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan.'' While the United States had troops in Afghanistan, their objective, along with forces from other nations, was to combat terrorism. ``Afghanistan is far away from Iraq. The United States does not need bases in Afghanistan; our country is too far away.''

Mr. Karzai was clear that his country was "deadly committed" to fighting the menace of terrorism, the reason being terrorism had threatened the very existence of the Afghan nation.

Mr. Karzai was keen that more of the international assistance intended for the reconstruction of Afghanistan should come to the Government rather than go to the United Nations, NGOs or projects being executed directly by donor countries. A total of $ 5 billion had been pledged to Afghanistan — of which $ 2 billion were to be disbursed in the year 2002. A mere $ 200 million had come directly to the Afghan Government. "We are over 50 per cent satisfied....''

Calling on Indian business and industry to come to Afghanistan if they wanted to make money, Mr. Karzai said that the law and order situation was conducive to investment.

His country was ready for all kind of investment from India. But, to "get rich,'' one needed to take some risks, Mr. Karzai said adding in a lighter vein that while money could not be taken out through the banking sector, it could be sent by "hawala'' channels to India. And the charges were "less'' than what the banks charged.

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