Foreign Secretary reaches Kabul

New Delhi, July 13 (ANI): Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon reached Kabul today to review the security of Indian assets in Afghanistan in the wake of July 7 terror strike at the Indian Embassy.

Senior officials of the Ministries of Home and External Affairs accompanied him for a two-day visit.

During his visit, he will hold discussions with Afghan authorities on ways to ensure adequate security for the Indian mission and workers.

National Security Advisor M. K. Narayanan on Saturday said for the first time that India believes Pakistan is behind the July 7 blast at the Indian embassy in Kabul.

"We not only suspect but we have a fair amount of intelligence (on the involvement of Pakistan)," Narayanan told television channels when asked whether India suspects Pakistan's involvement in the attack.

Narayanan further said, "I think that the people of this country need to know the facts. The Afghan government has categorically stated it, and we are aware of it. I think we need to pay back those who are responsible in the same coin."

He also added, "Our concept was that talk-talk is better than fight-fight. Like in other comprehensive dialogue mechanism that we have in place at several levels, the anti-terror mechanism was a part of this larger picture. In course of time the hope was that both the sides would share whatever information they had and come out with a holistic idea of what's going on. It hasn't worked so far."

However, he concluded by saying that "We haven't arrived at a decision that we should go for fight-fight. Let talks continue for the moment."

Last week, 50 persons were killed and more than 141 people were injured, including civilians and security forces in the blast in which a suicide bomber had rammed a car full of explosives into the gates of the Indian embassy.

Among the dead, four were identified as Indians, which included Brigadier R. Mehta and Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer (Counsellor-Political) V. Venkat Rao.

About 3,000 Indians are working on various reconstruction and developmental projects in Afghanistan and they have often been subjected to attacks by the terrorist group, Taliban. (ANI)