India hands Afghans third Airbus

India hands Afghans third Airbus

India has handed over the last of three Airbus jets it pledged to give Afghanistan's airline as part of a $100m aid package for the country.

The deal will further help rebuild the shattered Afghan carrier

Visiting Afghan President Hamid Karzai thanked India for its "very kind" gesture at a ceremony on Friday.

The ceremony in Delhi came a day after India announced it was to provide £70m in grants to Afghanistan on top of last year's $100m deal.

The 232-seater Airbus 300-B4 will help rebuild Ariana Airlines, which lost nearly all its fleet during the country's two decades of war.

Pipeline hopes

Mr Karzai, on a three-day visit to India, said the plane gift had "added value" to bilateral relations.

"It helps the Afghan airline perform better, take more passengers, go to more places around the world," he said.

Mr Karzai pays tribute at Mahatma Gandhi 's cremation site in Delhi

The traditionally warm ties between Kabul and Delhi were revived after the fall of the fundamentalist Taleban regime in 2001.

What remained of Ariana's fleet had been grounded by UN sanctions for the last two years of Taleban rule.

Also on Friday, Mr Karzai told a business meeting in Delhi that he hoped India would join an oil pipeline project to ship gas from Turkmenistan via Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Mr Karzai said his government was working with Islamabad to allow the transit through Pakistan of Indian goods.

Later on Friday, Mr Karzai flew to the Himalayan town of Shimla to pick up an honorary doctorate in literature from his alma mater.

Mr Karzai took a postgraduate course in political science at Himachal University from 1979 to 1983.

He is expected to fly back to Afghanistan on Saturday.