PM Modi and Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani at the joint press conference in New Delhi.
A joint effort to combat terror dominated talks during Afghan President Ashraf Ghani's first official visit to India, seven months after he was sworn in. His visit was delayed by a few hours because of a Taliban offensive in Afghanistan's Kunduz province.
"The shadow of terror haunts our children, women and youth. Terror must be confronted and must be overcome,'' Mr Ghani declared at a joint press conference with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Delhi's Hyderabad House. "We must be united both in region and globally to continue this phenomenon,'' he added.
"We share Afghanistan's pain over persisting terrorism and extremist violence that destroy lives and derail progress. We have a shared interest in the success of an Afghan-led and owned process, within the framework of the Afghan Constitution," PM Modi said in his opening remarks.
Mr Ghani, who has already visited China and Pakistan, said he had established a rapport with PM Modi when the two met at the conference of SAARC or the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation in Nepal last year.
"I had the pleasure of meeting Prime Minister Modi at SAARC. We've really hit it off. We can talk to each other. We've had telephonic conversations and exchange of views," he had told NDTV in an interview in Kabul on the eve of his visit. He had also asserted that "Afghanistan is going to be a platform for regional and global cooperation, not a battlefield for proxy wars."
India has gifted Afghanistan three helicopters and is ready to sign a bilateral motor vehicle pact to allow vehicles from both sides to traverse each other's countries. India is also pushing the Chabahar Port project, a tripartite transit agreement involving India, Afghanistan and Iran centred around the Iranian port of Chabahar.