New Delhi, Oct 5(ANI): Afghanistan has signed a strategic partnership with India in a move that puts pressure on Pakistan to rein in militants and negotiate a peace settlement.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai arrived in India to ink the deal after indicating he was losing faith in his olive branches to Pakistan, The Christian Science Monitor reports.
The deal marks a break from Karzai's efforts during the past year to enlist Pakistan's friendship and support for a peace settlement, the report said.
An Afghan official said that the strategic partnership, the first such official deal between the two countries, allows Afghanistan to ask for more military aid from India.
"We may not need until 2014 because NATO is already with us. But this document allows us, shows a green light," the official was quoted as saying.
The deal reflects the political realities closing in around Karzai, the report said, noting that his external backers, the Americans, are heading for troops withdrawal by 2014, and many of his internal backers who are ethnic minorities have lost all patience with his outreach to Pakistan.
Pakistan has made it clear throughout the past decade that it fears "encirclement" by any strong alliance between India and Afghanistan.
This agreement allows Karzai to brandish the threat of greater military cooperation with India if cooperation with Pakistan toward peace remains in question, the report said.
The pact comes on the heels of former Afghan President and High Peace Council leader Burhanuddin Rabbani's assassination. Afghan officials have indicated Pakistan was behind the killing and not a nation interested in Afghan peace, and Karzai's government submitted its evidence to Pakistan to back up the claim, the report added.
However, some Afghan analysts doubt that Afghaistan's deal with India would do much to pressure Pakistan.
"Afghanistan is holding an empty gun here," Daoud Sultanzoy, a former Member of Parliament in Afghanistan, was quoted as saying
"It seems like Afghanistan is using this - probably with acquiescence of Western countries and India - to put pressure on Pakistan. And Pakistan is used to these empty and hollow pressures," Sultanzoy added. (ANI)
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