Arun Jaitely leader for stability in Afghanistan post-2014

Washington, June 24: The withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan should not allow space for the revival of the Taliban there, senior BJP leader Arun Jaitely has said, as he sought a stable regime in the war-ravaged country post 2014.

"Post 2014 regime in Afghanistan must be one of stability, one which is development oriented, one which is peaceful, one which does not allow Afghanistan to be in any way adversely affected and does not allow the revival of the Taliban," Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha, Jaitley said in his speech at the launch of a India-centric think-tank in Washington, Foundation for India and Indian Diaspora Studies.

Jaitley's remarks comes a day after US President Barack Obama announced a 30,000 troop withdrawal from Afghanistan by the summer of next year and transition from combat to supportive role by 2014.

He said that the United States should ensure that post 2014, the regime in Afghanistan must be one of stability.

"The whole idea has to be that what happens in Afghanistan, post 2014 you do not squander away the advantages that happened in the last decade or more and therefore you have a stable system in place," he said.

On Pakistan, Jaitley said the ideological debate is now converging to an end.

"We are almost close to the finishing line. What did India say all these years? We said Pakistan is the epicentre if global terrorism. Pakistan uses terror as an instrument of state policy. When these words were first used by us, some considered it to be an overstatement," he noted.

"And today all these developments, every terrorist attack in the world has a Pakistani element. You now find a situation, where we were mild when we said it is a state in denial. It is not a state in denial, it is a state in duplicity. Therefore you can turn around and say, we did not know Osama bin Laden was hiding in Abbottabad."

PTI