Fight against terrorism not easy : Kalam

New Delhi, Apr 10 (UNI) President A P J Abdul Kalam today expressed concern at the increase in violence in some provinces of Afghanistan and cautioned that the fight against terrorism was not easy.

He also reaffirmed India's commitment to working together with Afghanistan for making it a stable and prosperous country and hoped that Indo-Afghan cooperation would further increase.

''We are concerned to see that in recent months, incidents of violence have increased in some of the provinces. We are also concerned at the nature of these attacks. We know that the fight against global terrorism is not an easy one but we are also convinced that given the political will and commitment, this challenge will also the met successfully by the Afghan people,'' Dr Kalam said in his speech at the banquent given in honour of visiting Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

He said that both countries, while sharing civilisational heritage, had also shared the pain and suffering of the Afghan people caused by years of conflict and destruction.

India felt the ''tragic consequences'' when the land was used as a safe haven for training terrorists.

Describing India's process of transformation as an ''experiment without parallel'' as such a change had never been attempted in a democratic framework, he said the transformation (in India) was taking place in an open society which was ready to take decisions through participative processes.

For a plural society, it was necessary to adopt a developmental model combining human progress with human freedom.

Observing that the 21st century was witnessing a knowledge explosion and information connectivity, Dr Kalam said both countries have a large population of young people and the best way to give freedom and progress to them was to give them the gift of knowledge.

''For any country to progress, it is very important that we empower the youth and women-folk...,'' he added.

Welcoming Afghanistan's admission into the SAARC, the President said this would be another opportunity for working together to promote regional economic cooperation.

''When India hosts the next Regional Economic Cooperation Conference on Afghanistan in November, I have no doubt that it will give further boost to promoting business-to-business relations,'' Dr Kalam said.

Referring to the Bonn Conference of 2001, President Kalam said that since then, Indo-Afghan cooperation had become multi-dimensional encompasing the fields of education, health, tele-communications, industry, transport, civil aviation, agriculture and irrigation, power, counter-narcotics and human resource development.

He hoped that such cooperation would further increase.

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