Taliban: Moscow Meeting, ‘Incomplete’ Without Taliban Representatives

The Taliban Ministry of Foreign Affairs in response to not getting invited to the next meeting of the Moscow format of consultations on Afghanistan stated that the absence of Taliban government delegates renders the meeting “incomplete.”

The Taliban’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Abdul Qahar Balkhi, stated in a tweet on Saturday, November 5, that their government’s absence from such gatherings “can have an adverse effect on engagement.”

The Moscow format of consultations on Afghanistan, which will take place in the middle of November, will not involve any representation from the Taliban government, according to Zamir Kabulov, the Russian president’s special representative for Afghanistan.

Russia, China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan representatives are expected to attend this meeting scheduled for mid-November.

The last Moscow consultative format meeting took place in October of the previous year. At that meeting, Abdul Salam Hanafi, Deputy Prime Minister of the Taliban government, chaired a Taliban delegation participating in the meeting.

At the same time, the spokesperson of the Taliban government Zabihullah Mujahid stated at a press conference that the Taliban hails the gatherings that will lead to improvements to the situation in Afghanistan.

Mujahid believes that previous gatherings in the region were favorable for Afghanistan because those who attended sought assistance and an improvement in Afghanistan’s current situation.

Any meeting that benefits Afghanistan, with or without the Taliban representation, he continued, “we welcome it and I support it because we need general cooperation at the regional level.”

The Russian National Security Council’s secretary, Nikolai Petroshev, claimed that the US created the Taliban, ISIS, and Al-Qaeda network in order to further its geopolitical objectives, which the Taliban government has dismissed the claim.

According to the foreign ministry, the Taliban were an incitement that “arose from among the people to rescue the nation that struggled for an Islamic system in the country by ending feudalism of the 90s.”

The spokesman for the Taliban’s foreign ministry asserts that the group has ultimately triumphed after a protracted struggle with feudalism in the 1990s and the subsequent eradication of foreign occupation.

Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that extremists of the Islamic State group (ISIS) and other terrorist organizations are trying to invade the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Source: Khaama