Kept out of Afghan meet,India lodges protest with Turkey

New Delhi has lodged a protest with Ankara for keeping it out of the Afghanistan security conference in Istanbul,apparently at the behest of Islamabad....

New Delhi has lodged a protest with Ankara for keeping it out of the Afghanistan security conference in Istanbul,apparently at the behest of Islamabad. This may cast a shadow over Turkish President Abdullah Guls visit to India next fortnight. Gul,the organiser of the conference,is on a two-day visit to India from February 9 after which he will leave for Dhaka.

India,France and Japan,all of whom have a substantial stake in stabilising Kabul,had protested to Ankara for not being invited to the conference to mull over the military and political future of Afghanistan. Paris and Tokyo were squeezed in at the last moment with New Delhi being left out in the cold.

The highest levels of the UPA government are upset at the Ankara snub as Turkey tilted towards Pakistani plan of keeping the conference at first confined to the immediate neighbours of Afghanistan and then shutting the door on India. This is despite the fact that Russia had invited Indian MEA officials for a separate Afghanistan conference in Moscow on January 25 and the United Kingdom has invited Foreign Minister S M Krishna to attend the London conference on January 28.

The top diplomats of the country have been informed that the Istanbul conference organisers first stuck to inviting six plus two immediate Afghan neighbours,including China,plus Russia and the US,then added the countries participating in the ISAF operations that includes Turkey. France and Japan,which has announced aid of 5 billion part of which will be used as Taliban reconciliation fund for Afghanistan,were included at the last moment.

What has peeved India is that both Britain and the US had quietly requested Ankara to invite New Delhi at the Afghanistan conference due to its role in stabilising the most volatile region in the world. The fact is that Prime Ministers envoy to Pakistan-Afghanistan Satinder Lambah was recently briefed in detail by the US Afghan-Pak envoy Richard Holbrooke in London and Afghanistan on the proposed new reconciliation initiative in Afghanistan.