Afghanistan May Join South Asian Grouping

President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan would like to join the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), he said on Friday, February 25, 2005. This way his country could help the regions (Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, founded in 1985) become a global power center.

This was said at a meeting in New Delhi, India.

"It would be an honour for Afghanistan to be invited to join SAARC. We would like to see it emerge as a great grouping for the development of Central and South Asia," Karzai told a conference in New Delhi organised by India Today news magazine on Friday.

With this new vision for the region, he believes in building bridges instead of walls. President Karzai would also like to build highways and pipelines all the way to India. That way, it would only take 32 hours for people, gas, and other energy sources to reach from one end to the other. The only troubling matter is the relationship with Iran, as it is right now. I cannot wait until the Iranian people are set free. That's a different story, though. My source is http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050225/wl_sthasia_afp/indiaafghanistan_050225111307