Russia has agreed to expand its military and economic assistance to Afghanistan in an effort to play a larger role in the region.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said his country would step up its presence in Afghanistan and increase defence aid, including the training of greater numbers of Afghan military personnel in Russia.
“Russia is willing to extend all possible assistance to Afghanistan to enable it to take care of its own security after 2014,” Mr. Medvedev said after talks with visiting Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Mr. Karzai is on his first official visit to Russia since taking office in 2004, even though he has visited Moscow for multilateral meetings. It is also the first visit by an Afghan head of state since the war with the Soviet Union.
The Russian leader has accepted Mr. Karzai's invitation to pay an official visit to Afghanistan.
Mr. Medvedev voiced the hope that the U.S.-led international military coalition would succeed in Afghanistan and leave the country “with honours and dignity” by 2014. He said Russia was assisting these efforts. On the eve of Mr. Karzai's visit Mr. Medvedev sent to Parliament a Russian-U.S. agreement on the air transit of military cargoes to Afghanistan. In November Russia donated 20,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles and more than two million cartridges to the Afghan Interior Ministry. Talks are underway with NATO to supply Russian Mi-17 helicopters to Afghan forces.
A joint Russian-Afghan statement voiced support for Russia's involvement in regional infrastructure projects, including a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India across Afghanistan (TAPI) and electricity exports from Tajikistan to Afghanistan and Pakistan, known as the CASA-1000 (Central Asia-South Asia) project.
Russia and Afghanistan signed an economic cooperation agreement to boost bilateral trade, which has quadrupled in recent years to $500 million.
The joint statement said Moscow was ready to help Afghanistan undertake a number of “priority economic projects”, such as the rehabilitation of the Salang tunnel, a fertilizer plant in Mazari-Sharif and the Kabul University, as well as help build new power and industry projects.
The announced projects would mark Russia's big-time return to Afghanistan after the end of its military intervention more than two decades ago.
