India announces new Development Projects in Afghanistan

India has announced the launch of Phase-IV of the High Impact Community Development Projects in Afghanistan. It envisages more than 100 projects worth  80 million dollars that India would undertake in Afghanistan. External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar said this during the  2020 Afghanistan Conference organized in Geneva through video- conference. Dr Jaishankar also announced that India had just concluded with Afghanistan an agreement for the construction of the Shatoot dam, which would provide safe drinking water to two million residents of Kabul city. He said, India had earlier built the 202-kilometer Phul-e-Khumri transmission line that provided electricity to Kabul city.

in a virtual address to a global donor conference in Geneva, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for an immediate, unconditional ceasefire in Afghanistan to create a conducive environment for Doha peace talks with the Taliban. The Taliban and Afghan government have been engaged in peace talks in Qatar since September 12 but no progress has been announced so far.

Meanwhile, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani  said that violence had skyrocketed since a US-Taliban deal in February paved the way for the withdrawal of foreign forces by May 2021. He also said plans to achieve peace did not materialise as imagined.