New Delhi: The establishment of war-torn Afghanistan's first agriculture university with India's help in the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar is a breakthrough in Indo-Afghan strategic partnership, External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid has said.
"For India, a strong, prosperous and economically independent Afghanistan is a strategic priority and a key element of our Strategic Partnership Agreement," said Khurshid, who returned last night from Kandahar after inaugurating the Afghan National Agricultural Sciences and Technology University (ANASTU) in the sprawling Tarnak farm.
"We, therefore, see our participation in this Agriculture University project as an important activity of the India- Afghanistan strategic partnership," he said.
Interestingly, the Tarnak farm was al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden's main Afghan residence during much of the late 1990s. From there he oversaw al-Qaeda's plot to fly hijacked airliners into the World Trade Centre in New York and Pentagon in Washington in an attack that killed nearly 3,000 people.
Khurshid noted that India has already offered 614 agricultural scholarships for Afghan students who are presently being trained at Indian agriculture institutes. He hoped that many of those being trained in India would one day return as professors to ANASTU in which India has invested up to $ 8 million.
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