Modi likely to visit Kabul after his Russia visit
Reports claimed the PM might make a stopover in Kabul on his way home from Moscow.
New Delhi: External affairs ministry officials were tightlipped on some reports on Monday night that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to visit Kabul on December 25, where he will inaugurate the new building of the Afghan Parliament built by India at a cost of about $90 million.
These reports claimed the PM might make a stopover in Kabul on his way home from Moscow. The Parliament building project, initially conceived at a cost of $45 million, was started by India in 2007 as part of efforts to rebuild war-torn Afghanistan.
Even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi leaves for the visit to Russia on Wednesday, Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar on Tuesday said that India's bilateral ties with the US and Russia's ties with Pakistan should “not be seen as a zero sum game" and that it was “not a great positional shift”.
He was responding to a question on whether India was aware of Russian concerns regarding the strengthening of strategic ties between India and US. President Putin will host a private dinner for Prime Minister Modi on Wednesday evening.
After formal talks on Thursday morning, the two “time-tested” partners are likely to ink a number of pacts in a range of sectors including nuclear energy and defence.