India steps up Kabul contacts

India hopes to build on its old Afghan ties

Afghanistan's Foreign Minister-designate, Abdullah Abdullah, has met Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee during a visit to Delhi.

It is the latest in a series of high-level contacts between India and the new interim government in Afghanistan as Delhi seeks to establish its influence in Kabul.

The meeting took place several hours after the dramatic attack on the Indian parliament.

Meetings with other senior members of the government have been postponed because of the incident.

Delhi says the visit of Mr Abdullah - coupled with an earlier visit by the Afghan Interior minister-designate Younis Qanooni - shows that India will have an important role to play in the reconstruction of Afghanistan.

Correspondents say the new Afghan administration remains suspicious of Pakistan and its past support for the Taleban, and looks to India - an old ally of the Northern Alliance - for support.

Renewing ties

Mr Abdullah arrived in Delhi late on Wednesday on an Indian military aircraft which was returning to Delhi after ferrying medicine and supplies to the Afghan capital, Kabul.

"I think there is a new opportunity for Afghanistan and India," Mr Abdullah said in Delhi.

Indian films are popular with Afghans

India has long backed the Northern Alliance, is close to its leadership and sees the fall of the Taleban as a diplomatic triumph.

Many of its leaders, including Mr Abdullah, have family in Delhi, where they took shelter after the Taleban takeover in 1992.

After the fall of the Taleban, India moved swiftly to re-establish its links with Afghanistan, appointing a special envoy and taking steps to open its embassy in Kabul.

The BBC's Alastair Lawson in Delhi says much has been made in government circles of the speed in which India has opened its embassy in Kabul in comparison to Pakistan.

Ministers point out that Islamabad is still regretting its once close relations with the Taleban.

Hijack memory

India has long suspected the Taleban of stoking up the insurgency in Indian-administered Kashmir.

India has bitter memories of the Kandahar hijack

And many in the government still have not forgotten when an Indian Airlines plane was hijacked two years and forced to land in Kandahar.

Delhi says the hijackers were able to secure the release of several Kashmir militants from prison in India because they were tacitly helped by the Taleban.

Indian officials say they expect the incoming prime minister of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, will also pay a visit shortly.

Mr Karzai attended university in north India and is known to have warm relations with Delhi.

Mr Abdullah's visit co-incides with an announcement that Afghanistan's commercial carrier, Ariana Afghan, will soon make its first commercial flight to India since it was grounded in 1999.