DM Monitoring
MOSCOW: Russia hosts the Taliban for talks in Moscow on Wednesday, seeking to assert its influence on Central Asia and push for action against Islamic State (IS) fighters which says have massed in perennially volatile Afghanistan.
The talks, which draw officials from 10 countries including China and Pakistan, are one of the Taliban’s most significant international meetings since seizing power in mid-August.
The Taliban must live up to international “expectations” on human rights if they want to be recognised by governments around the world, the Kremlin’s representative on Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, said.
Mr. Kabulov said the group would be recognised when they “start fulfilling the expectations of the international community on human rights and inclusion”, Kabulov said.
The Kremlin’s envoy to Afghanistan said the Taliban gave participants of the negotiations in Moscow, including China and Pakistan, assurances the group was making headway on rights and governance issues.
Taliban representatives told Kabulov they “are working on improving governance and improving human rights”, he told reporters. “We’ll see,” Kabulov said.
He also called on the international community to abandon its “bias” and unite to help the Afghan people.
“Not everyone likes the new government in Afghanistan, but by punishing the government, we punish the whole people,” he said.
He said that a joint statement from all 10 participating countries concluding the talks would call on the United Nations to convene a donor conference to raise funds for Afghanistan. Taliban representatives did not immediately address reporters following Kabulov’s comments to journalists.
Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Salam Hanafi, a senior figure in the new Afghan leadership, however, said earlier on Wednesday that Afghanistan’s new leadership was “already inclusive”.
“We don’t need foreign military aid, we need support for peace in Afghanistan, we need reconstruction and resettlement,” Hanafi said.
Before the start of talks on Afghanistan, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters that Moscow wants a mobilization of international aid to support Afghanistan.
“We are convinced that it is time to mobilise the resources of the international community to provide Kabul with effective financial humanitarian support, including to prevent a humanitarian crisis and reduce migration flows”, said Lavrov.
Lavrov said he regretted the absence of the United States from the talks. Washington has skipped the Moscow meeting citing technical reasons but has said it plans to join similar talks in the future. Moscow is mainly concerned about the risk of instability in the former Soviet countries of Central Asia, and possible migrant flows and militant activity directed from Afghanistan.
“We call on the Taliban movement, and we discussed this with their distinguished delegation, to prevent the use of Afghanistan’s territory against third countries, most importantly neighbours,” Lavrov said.
Russia fought its own war in Afghanistan in the 1980s and has close military and political ties with former Soviet Central Asian states that border Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s Special Representative for Afghanistan, Ambassador Muhammad Sadiq, while representing Pakistan at the forum, said peace in Afghanistan will benefit the entire region in terms of stability, secure borders, enhanced connectivity, return of refugees and countering of terrorism.
In his statement, the Special Representative thanked Russia for hosting the third round of the meeting. He conveyed that Pakistan’s constructive role in the Afghan peace process was well-recognized and acknowledged by the international community.
He emphasized that there was urgent need to extend humanitarian support to Afghanistan for which international community must step up its efforts. Ambassador Sadiq underscored the importance of aid and economic assistance to avert humanitarian and financial crisis in the war torn country.
Special Representative reiterated Pakistan’s firm belief that peace went hand in hand with prosperity and economic stability. He emphasized that after all these years, the people of Afghanistan need and deserve peace, progress and prosperity and the international community must generously help them to walk on that path.
