India has potential to play significant role in supporting Afghan people, says EU special envoy

European Union's special envoy on Afghanistan Tomas Niklasson believes that India has the potential to play a significant role in supporting Afghan people and lauded New Delhi's role in providing humanitarian assistance.

"I think India has the potential to play a significant role in supporting Afghan people, in building on the development assistance it has provided, in building on cultural and historic links. I don't think there should be a competition about Afghanistan," Niklasson told ANI.

The special envoy lauded India's role in providing humanitarian assistance and said, "It is a huge need for humanitarian assistance and the Indian offer is generous. We have also scaled up our systems to Afghanistan. And I hope that the solution can be found soon so that the Afghan people can get access to it to the assistance offered by India."

Niklasson highlighted that India has a long history of engaging with Afghanistan, because of historic and cultural links.

EU envoy also believes that many countries in the region who have engaged with the Afghan people and will continue to do so which includes India.

He further said, "We need whatever we can to ensure humanitarian assistance reaches the people. We have international staff on the ground in Kabul."

"We have increased our humanitarian assistance from 60 mn to 300 mn Euros," the EU envoy added.

( With inputs from ANI )

Disclaimer: This post has been auto-published from an agency feed without any modifications to the text and has not been reviewed by an editor