TIL Desk/National/New Delhi/ India should have publicly engaged with the Taliban before they took over Afghanistan, former External Affairs Minister K Natwar Singh said on Wednesday and favoured establishing diplomatic ties if they function as a responsible government going forward in the war-torn country.
Singh, who was the foreign minister in UPA-I and also served as India’s Ambassador to Pakistan besides holding other senior diplomatic positions, said India should adopt a “wait and watch” approach for the time being but noted that the Taliban that have taken over seems to be a “better lot” than those that ruled there two decades earlier.
In an interview, 92-year-old Singh said India was quite close to President Ashraf Ghani “who has run away” but the situation has “altered drastically” now. Though the situation is not “adversarial”, even a semblance of friendship has disappeared and that is why the Indian government government is “very careful”, he added. The Americans have to take a lot of blame because US President Joe Biden, by pulling out his troops, made it easy for the Taliban to walk in, Singh said.
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