New Delhi: In view of the fast changing situation in war torn Afghanistan, the External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Thursday briefed parliamentary leaders of various political parties today on the developments in the Taliban-captured country. The meeting continued for over three hand a half hours and witnessed the presence of 37 leaders from 31 parties.
After the conclusion of the meeting with political leaders, EAM S Jaishankar while addressing the media said, "the message which we all want to give you as political partiea includinng the government is that on this matter, we all have similar views. We have strong national position on afghanistan. The friendship with the Afghan people matters to all of us. We all approach this situation in a spitit of national unity."
The Union Minister further told reporters that the main focus of the government at present is to evacuation all Indian nationals.
"Our focus is on evacuation and the government is doing everything to evacuate people. Under Operation 'Devi Shakti' we've done 6 evacuation flights. We'v brought back most of the Indians but not all of them as some of them couldn't make it for the flight yesterday. We'll definitely try and bring out everybody. We've also brought out some Afghan citizens," S Jaishankar said.
"The government is very strongly committed to ensuring full evacuation as soon as possible, and also seeing that in terms of any international decisions which are made, any gatherings that are there, that our role is recognised," the External Affairs Minister said, adding that there will be many more meetings in coming days.
The meeting with parliamentary leaders of various political parties came after Prime Minister Narendra Modi instructed the MEA and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi to brief further details to the leaders of the political parties on the situation of Afghanistan.
The government has been making all efforts to bring back Indians and leaders of Afghan Sikh and Hindu communities who fear Taliban's persecution there. The first air rescue operation was made on August 17, when an IAF C-17 aircraft brought back 120 Indians to Jamnagar. Till Sunday evening, a total of 526 persons have arrived in Delhi apart from the 168 who arrived by the Indian Air Force transport aircraft C-17 globemaster at the Hindan air base on Sunday morning