Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla on Friday said that the Taliban has indicated that it will be reasonable towards India’s concerns, reported PTI.
Shringla made the statement at the end of his three-day official visit to Washington DC in the United States, when he was asked about the meeting between Indian Ambassador in Qatar Deepak Mittal and a senior Taliban leader in the Qatari capital of Doha. This was the first meeting between the two sides since the Taliban took over Afghanistan.
Soon after seizing control of Afghanistan on August 15, the Taliban had claimed that it would not discriminate against women or seek revenge from anyone, including ousted officials of the Afghanistan government.
The announcements were seen as a major shift from their earlier policies when they were in power before being ousted in 2001. The Taliban, however, do not seem to have stuck to their promises as reports have shown that they were targeting people who had worked with the US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
A confidential United Nations document accessed by AFP had said that the Taliban was intensifying their search for such people.
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On Friday, the foreign secretary said that India has told the Taliban that terrorism emanating from its territories should not be directed towards India and that New Delhi is mindful of the status of women and minorities.
Shringla told reporters that India and the United States were closely watching Pakistan’s actions in Afghanistan. He said that both India and the US have a wait-and-watch policy to assess the situation developing in the conflict-torn country.
The foreign secretary clarified that the policy does not mean that the countries will not do anything. “The situation is very fluid on the ground, you have to allow it to see how it evolves,” he said. “You have to see whether the assurances that have been made publicly are actually maintained on the ground, and how things work out.”
Shringla noted that the United Nations Security Council resolution on Afghanistan had made specific mentions to terror groups Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba.
“We do have concerns about the free ingress that these two terrorist groups have had in Afghanistan, their role and we will watch that carefully,” he said. “The role of Pakistan has to be seen in that context.”
On Pakistan, the foreign secretary said that the country has “supported and nurtured the Taliban”.
He said that the US has also made it clear that it would hold the Taliban accountable if terrorist activities are carried out from Afghanistan. “The international community is on the same page,” he added.
Shringla was in Washington DC to meet US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and top officials of the Joe Biden administration. He also interacted with representatives of industries and think tanks.
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