External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar is likely to hold a bilateral meeting with Afghanistan’s acting foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) foreign ministers’ meeting being held under the Uzbek presidency, ThePrint has learnt.
While there is no official confirmation on the meeting from either side, Afghanistan’s Taliban regime has been requesting a meeting with Jaishankar ever since India decided to reopen its embassy in Kabul in June this year, diplomatic sources told ThePrint.
If such a meeting does take place, it will be the first ever face-to-face interaction between Jaishankar and Muttaqi.
The proposed meeting, top-level sources said, will purely focus on issues concerning humanitarian aid and assistance meant for the Afghan people.
Jaishankar left Thursday on a two-day visit to Uzbekistan for the SCO foreign ministers’ meeting, where he is expected to have a slew of bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the main event.
While Jaishankar and Muttaqi are likely to take stock of the humanitarian aid flowing from India to Afghanistan at the proposed meeting, the Afghan side is likely to make a proposal for New Delhi to resume work on some of the mega Indian infrastructure projects that were stalled by the overthrow of the former Ashraf Ghani government in Kabul, sources told ThePrint.
Jaishankar, on the other hand, is likely to “insist strongly” on the fact that New Delhi will not tolerate a rise in terrorism on Afghan soil, thereby reiterating the stand India took under UNSC Resolution 2593 passed in August last year during its presidency of the UN Security Council, sources added.