Kabul: Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has said that ‘terrorism is not a threat to one of us but, a threat to all’.
He made the remarks while speaking at the ongoing Brussels conference on Afghanistan.
The conference in Brussels is being hosted by the European Union and Afghanistan from October 4 to 5 and some 70 countries and 30 international organizations and agencies are participating.
The official account of the Office of the President of Afghanistan in a series of tweets highlighted the remarks made by Ghani.
Ghani during the conference claimed that his country has made a central policy decision and that it’s going to be a roundabout and hub of connectivity.
Maintaining that Kabul’s conception is not to go project by project, but to go by clusters and corridors of connectivity, he said, “Eradication of poverty is within our reach, but it is not currently within our grasp.”
He also emphasised that great obstacles aren’t physical, but one of mental attitude and inherited notions.
“The inherited notion that we have to struggle against is that you can block others from connecting but you can’t,” he added.
Asserting that Asian regional integration is not against anyone, but for everyone, Ghani said that connectivity with neighbours needs to be created.
‘We do not interconnect because we are just neighbors. We must create the connectivity to be neighbors..We’ve started a major initiative with India to revive the Silk Road through an air corridor,” he added.
Ghani said that those who will deny Kabul the connectivity will be marginalized.
His remark on connectivity with India comes in wake of the recent agreement for establishment of an air corridor between the two nations.
Last month, he called upon Pakistan to allow Kabul to engage in trade with India through its land routes, a request turned down by Islamabad.
However, the trade relations can realize its true potential if the Wagah-Attari route is opened for bilateral trade with Afghanistan.
The Afghanistan Pakistan Transit Trade Agreement (APTTA) has been restrictive in this aspect.
The APTTA is a bilateral trade agreement between Islamabad and Kabul. It has been renegotiated several times.
The treaty was signed in 1950 which gave Afghanistan the right to import duty-free goods through Karachi.
ANI