India Monday said it fully supported the leadership of Hamid Karzai, a day ahead of his swearing in as the first elected president of Afghanistan, a foreign ministry spokesman said. "We fully support his leadership," foreign ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna said.
New Delhi had already welcomed the successful electoral process through which Karzai was elected with a majority in the October 9 polls, he said.
"We (India) are engaged in a number of economic reconstruction projects totalling over 400 million dollars in support of Afghanistan's political stability and economic prosperity.
"India has always supported polices aimed at ensuring inter-ethnic harmony and achieving national consensus," he added. Karzai, 46, won a landslide victory with 55.4 percent of the vote in the country's historic ballot, drawing most of his support from the ethnically Pashtun south and east and major urban centres.
India, along with Iran and Russia, backed Afghanistan's Northern Alliance against the former hard-line Islamic Taleban regime.
After the Taleban were routed in late 2001, India offered to help develop Afghanistan's infrastructure, civil aviation, transport and industry sectors, as well as its health facilities, educational institutions and agriculture.
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