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New Delhi : Despite the heightened threat perception, India is all set to reopen in Kabul its medical mission, which had been closed after the February 26 attacks.
Highly placed government sources revealed that the process to replace some of the staff there had already been initiated, and the mission is expected to resume functioning "very soon".
India was forced to temporarily close the medical mission in Kabul as the gruesome attack seemed to be aimed specifically at New Delhi's interests. The mission comprising six doctors and five paramedics was functioning from the Indira Gandhi Child Care Hospital set up under India's assistance programme. While one person of the 11-member team was killed, several others were injured.
"The medical mission in Kabul will resume full-scale operations shortly. The staff who had been injured are being replaced," said a source, adding that India did not completely wound up operations after the attack because it was confident all along that the mission would resume.
India was operating five medical missions in Kabul, Herat, Kandahar, Jalalabad and Mazar-e-Sharif. While the mission at Mazar-e-Sharif continued to function after the attacks, operations in the remaining four were temporarily suspended.
Meanwhile, Afghanistan foreign minister Zalmay Rassuol arrived in India on Aug 24 on a two-day visit. He briefed PM Manmohan Singh about the ongoing negotiations for political settlement in the country. Singh is said to have expressed his concern over attempts for reconciliation with Taliban which could result in power-sharing agreements with them.
Rassuol will also hold discussions with his counterpart S M Krishna, NSA Shiv Shankar Menon and also call on the PM. "We will reiterate our position that India supports an Afghanistan-led process which is transparent and in keeping with the red lines specified -- shunning violence, snapping links with terrorist organisations and adhering to the Afghan constitution," said an official, adding that India plays a "benign" role in Afghanistan, which is being appreciated by the international community.
The first standalone visit by Rassoul to India as foreign minister comes soon after Afghan national security adviser Rangin Dadfar Spanta accused Pakistan's military-intelligence establishment of harbouring the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
According to the government officials, despite the heinous attacks by forces inimical to India-Afghanistan friendship, India remains committed to assisting the people and government of Afghanistan "in their quest for a peaceful, pluralistic, democratic, and prosperous Afghanistan." "This approach of India, this assistance of India that is being provided in Afghanistan, is positively reflected in a number of opinion polls conducted by independent agencies where the people of Afghanistan have spoken in very warm terms about what India has been doing," foreign ministry spokesperson Vishnu Prakash said.
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