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Russia ready to cooperate on defence matters: Karzai office
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
KABUL: President Hamid Karzais office said on Monday that Russia is ready to cooperate on defence matters with Afghanistan.
The announcement coincides with an increasingly public tussle between Afghan and Western officials. Russias President Dmitry Medvedev told Karzai in a letter that cooperation on defence issues would ìbe effective for both countries and also effective for maintaining security in the region,î Karzais office said in a statement.
As a friendly government to Afghanistan, Russia is ready to offer its cooperation to an independent and a democratic Afghanistan, the statement quoted Medvedev as saying. The statement did not say how the two countries would cooperate. A spokesman at the Kremlin in Russia said he did not immediately have any details about the exchange between Medvedev and Karzai. Moscow would have little to gain if the US and Nato mission to defeat the Taliban and install a strong central Afghan government failed.
The relationship between Nato and Russia has been delicate for years, but Russia in November allowed Spain and Germany to use Russian rail lines to ship supplies for their forces in Afghanistan.
The correspondence from Karzai comes as Afghan officials are fighting criticism that Karzais government is weak and corrupt. In the countrys latest violence, a roadside bomb struck a police vehicle in southern Helmand provinces Gereshk district on Monday, killing two policemen and wounding three civilians, said Daud Ahmadi, a spokesman for the provincial governor. Separately, a suicide car bomb attack near the gates of a US base in eastern Afghanistan on Monday killed one Afghan civilian and wounded six more, officials said.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
KABUL: President Hamid Karzais office said on Monday that Russia is ready to cooperate on defence matters with Afghanistan.
The announcement coincides with an increasingly public tussle between Afghan and Western officials. Russias President Dmitry Medvedev told Karzai in a letter that cooperation on defence issues would ìbe effective for both countries and also effective for maintaining security in the region,î Karzais office said in a statement.
As a friendly government to Afghanistan, Russia is ready to offer its cooperation to an independent and a democratic Afghanistan, the statement quoted Medvedev as saying. The statement did not say how the two countries would cooperate. A spokesman at the Kremlin in Russia said he did not immediately have any details about the exchange between Medvedev and Karzai. Moscow would have little to gain if the US and Nato mission to defeat the Taliban and install a strong central Afghan government failed.
The relationship between Nato and Russia has been delicate for years, but Russia in November allowed Spain and Germany to use Russian rail lines to ship supplies for their forces in Afghanistan.
The correspondence from Karzai comes as Afghan officials are fighting criticism that Karzais government is weak and corrupt. In the countrys latest violence, a roadside bomb struck a police vehicle in southern Helmand provinces Gereshk district on Monday, killing two policemen and wounding three civilians, said Daud Ahmadi, a spokesman for the provincial governor. Separately, a suicide car bomb attack near the gates of a US base in eastern Afghanistan on Monday killed one Afghan civilian and wounded six more, officials said.
