“Pakistan should give access through land (for transport of goods) which is now available only through ports,” Mukherjee said after a meeting with his Afghan counterpart Rangin Dadfar Spanta.

In fact, at meetings through the day with Afghan leaders—among them was a significant hour-long meeting with President Hamid Karzai—the Indian Foreign Minister, making his first trip to Kabul, was moving actively on strengthening the strategic relationships and the importance of having a friendly government in the country. The transit route issue came up even as the two countries took up the issue of increased Taliban activity from the Pakistan side as also the security of Indians in the country.

Sources said by raising the transit route access through Pakistan—using the Khyber-Jalalabad-Kabul link—India was also sending a signal to the United States and the West to put pressure on Pakistan, with the suggestion that this was crucial in the context of reaching out to the Afghans. Raising India’s assistance by another US$100 million to an overall aid package of US$750 million and signing a tripartite MoU with Afghanistan and the UNDP for capacity building were among the initiatives from India that would fit into this overall scheme.

It was evident throughout that while delivering the SAARC invitation to President Karzai, India was only keen to muster a bigger hand in Afghanistan’s development. Mukherjee did not conceal this when he told members of the Indian community, “I appreciate you have volunteered to come here despite very difficult working conditions and to help establish India’s presence in Afghanistan.”

Meanwhile, even as sources said a question mark hung over the SAARC summit in early April because of the delay in conducting the Bangladesh elections, the purpose of inviting Karzai was also to fulfil a plan from the Indians to draw Kabul into a greater role in SAARC and finally for its integration with South Asia.

“The theme of the SAARC summit is to reconnect the subcontinent to itself and to the rest of the world and here Afghanistan is very important in the overall scheme of things,” Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon said, while giving details of Mukherjee’s meetings with the Afghan leadership.

Help for Afghanistan

• Additional assistance of US$ 100 million, but India wants to approach beneficiaries directly.

• Supporting smaller development projects of less than US$ 1 million, like building schools, to reach out to the community.

• Signing a tripartite agreement for capacity building with the Afghanistan government. The UNDP is a part of this and like India will contribute US$1.08 million

• Handing over of the OPD block of the Indira Gandhi Institute of Child Health and formally opening a road named after Indira Gandhi next to the hospital

• Launching an online registry for Indians at the Indian Embassy—meakabul.nic.in—that would have details of the over 3,000 Indians in the country