NEW DELHI, India
India’s ambassador to Qatar held talks
with a top Taliban leader on Tuesday, the Indian foreign ministry said, the
first formal diplomatic engagement since the hardline Islamist group took over
Afghanistan.Ambassador of India to Qatar, Deepak Mittal.
The envoy, Deepak Mittal, met Sher
Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, the head of the Taliban’s Political Office in Doha,
at the request of the Taliban, the foreign ministry said.
India has long had concerns about the
Taliban because of the group’s close ties to arch rival Pakistan. The foreign
ministry said the two sides discussed the safety of Indians left behind in Afghanistan.
Mittal also conveyed India’s fears that
anti-India militants could use Afghanistan’s soil to mount attacks, the foreign
ministry said.
“The Taliban representative assured the
ambassador that these issues would be positively addressed,” the foreign
ministry said.
The talks come days after Stanekzai was
quoted in the local press as saying that the Taliban wanted political and
economic ties with India.
There was no immediate comment from the
Taliban on the talks with the Indians.
India invested more than $3 billion in development
work in Afghanistan and had built close ties with the U.S.-backed Kabul
government. But with the rapid advance of the Taliban, the Indian government
was facing criticism at home for not opening a channel of communication to the
militants.
In June, informal contacts were
established with Taliban political leaders in Doha, government sources said.
The big fear is that militant groups fighting Indian rule in Muslim-majority
Kashmir will become emboldened with the victory of the Taliban over foreign
forces, one of the sources said.
“Ambassador Mittal raised India’s concern
that Afghanistan’s soil should not be used for anti-Indian activities and
terrorism in any manner,” the foreign ministry said.
When the Taliban were last in power from
1996-2001, India along with Russia and Iran supported the Northern Alliance
that pursued armed resistance against them.
Stanekzai, who Indian officials say
received training in an Indian military academy as an Afghan officer in the
1980s, had informally reached out to India last month, asking it not to shut
down its embassy, the source said.
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