By
IOL South Asia Correspondent
NEW
DELHI, Aug 16 (IslamOnline) - India has set up a military base in
Central Asia as global competition for access to the oil and gas-rich
region intensifies, reported IANS news agency quoted by Times of
India's website Friday, August 16, 2002. It is the first such Indian
military facility outside India and has been quietly operational since
May.
The
agency said, citing military and diplomatic sources, that the Indian
base has been set up at Farkhor in Tajikistan, close to Afghanistan's
border. Geographically, Tajikistan is Central Asia's nearest state to
India.
Sources
said the base had been helpful in transporting relief assistance to
Afghanistan due to the mutual ban on over flights India and Pakistan
imposed on each other last December. Though Farkhor had been used by
these flights for refueling, smaller planes were used because it had
only a short runway.
With
the Indian base in Tajikistan, larger transport planes are able to
land and take off from the base. The base was set up following a
bilateral agreement reached during Defense Minister George Fernandes'
visit to the Tajik capital of Dushanbe in April. The two countries
agreed to cooperate in the fight against terrorism.
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Defense (Map of Tajikistan showing proximity to
India
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During
his April visit, Fernandes held extensive talks with Tajikistan
President Emomali Rakhmonov, Prime Minister Akil Akipov and Defense
Minister General Sherali Khairullayev.
He
also presented two military helicopters to the Tajikistan Air Force.
"The base was set up shortly after the visit," IANS quoted a
senior defence official as saying.
In
May last year the two countries signed a joint declaration on
bilateral ties and five agreements, including one on combating drug
trafficking and another for enhanced economic cooperation. The Joint
Declaration on Principles of Mutual Relations was signed by the
visiting Tajikistan President Emomali Sharifovich Rakhmonov and Indian
Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in New Delhi.
A
high-ranking Indian military delegation visited Dushanbe last
February. During a visit by the Tajik Defense Minister to New Delhi in
December, the two countries signed a protocol on military-technical
cooperation and exchange of information against international
terrorism and separatism.
India,
Tajikistan, Russia and Iran backed the Tajik-dominated Northern
Alliance in Afghanistan in its fight against the Taliban regime before
its collapse late last year.
The
Indian base is in the same area in Farkhor where an Indian military
hospital functioned for many years to treat wounded soldiers of
Afghanistan's opposition Northern Alliance. That hospital, where 25
Indian doctors and male nurses worked, has since been closed and
shifted to Kabul, where the Indian Army has set up a 250-bed hospital
exclusively to treat Afghan soldiers
