Shri Randhir Jaiswal, the spokesperson for India’s Ministry of External Affairs, said that India’s foreign secretary recently met with Afghanistan’s acting foreign minister in Dubai, marking the highest level of engagement India has had with the interim Afghan government.
Speaking at a press briefing, Jaiswal highlighted that the purpose of this meeting was to strengthen long-term relations with the people of Afghanistan.
Responding to a question regarding this meeting, Jaiswal said “We have a technical mission in Kabul. Also, we have had engagements at Joint Secretary level and several of them in the past year or so.This was the highest level of engagement that we have had and we have clearly spelt out that we want to do more for… to offer humanitarian assistance and also to engage with the people of Afghanistan on development cooperation and on both these counts we want to continue to build on what we are doing there to strengthen our long-standing relationship with the people of Afghanistan.”
During the meeting between Amir Khan Muttaqi and Vikram Misri, India’s foreign secretary, the two sides discussed humanitarian assistance, bilateral issues, and regional security.
Jaiswal also highlighted the presence of Afghan players in the Indian Premier League (IPL), emphasizing that India is seeking to expand its relations with Afghanistan in the field of sports as well.
“We also want to do more on sports and you would have seen there are several cricket players from Afghanistan who play here in the IPL. Greater Noida or one of the places also happens to be the home ground. See, these are… all these are areas where we want to build our relations so that we can bring more benefit of our approach, of our humanitarian assistance, of our engagement on the development cooperation front that we have with Afghanistan,” he said.
In this year’s IPL tournament, Afghan players such as Rashid Khan, Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Noor Ahmad Laknawal, Azmatullah Omarzai, Karim Janat, Fazalhaq Farooqi, and Allah Mohammad Ghazanfar are playing for various teams.