India, Oct. 10 -- In the first visit by a senior Afghan government official to India since the Taliban's return to power, Acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi met External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar in New Delhi, signalling a calibrated shift in India's outreach to Kabul. Until now, only relatively junior Afghan functionaries, including a minister handling border affairs, had travelled to India.

India unveiled a wide-ranging package of development assistance: six new health projects, the gift of 20 ambulances (five handed over symbolically), and the supply of MRI and CT scan machines to major Afghan hospitals. It also committed vaccines and cancer medicines, rehabilitation materials for drug-de-addiction centres through the UNOD...