Karzai urges closer cooperation in achieving peace and stability

Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai has expressed the hope for closer cooperation of countries of the region in achieving peace, political and economic stability. Addressing the fifth regional cooperation conference on Afghanistan that opened in the Tajik capital on Monday, Karzai said, “we drafted a national development strategy that embraces not only Afghanistan, but also the whole region and within the framework of this strategy’s implementation we opened roads and doors for neighbouring countries. This already helped to significantly increase trade and goods transit.” The Afghan authorities support regional projects in energy, infrastructure and transport, he said. “We fully support such regional projects as the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline, the Central Asia South Asia Regional Energy and Trade (CASA-1000) Project and others,” he said. Karzai expressed the hope that the ongoing conference will help to draft more concrete proposals and projects that will be translated into reality. He regretted that most solutions adopted at the previous conferences remained on paper.