Vladimir Putin: Taliban compromised itself

Russia has not waited long to respond to the US statement about the Taliban’s participation in the future Afghan government. After the Shanghai forum, the Russian president flew to Dushanbe, where he held negotiations with Tajik President Emomali Rakhmonov and the leader of the official Afghan government, Burhanuddin Rabbani. The negotiations were prepared beforehand this could be concluded at least because of the fact that two days earlier defence minister Sergei Ivanov and Federal Security Service’s leader Nikolai Patrushev were reported to fly to Tajikistan. Tajik president Emomali Rakhmonov added information. In his interview, he said this meeting in Dushanbe had been initiated by Vladimir Putin. “We have arranged it beforehand,” – Emomali Rakhmonov said to journalists after the meeting. As a result of the meeting, a special statement about Afghanistan was made. In the statement it is being stressed in particular, that by refusing to keep demands of the anti-terrorist coalition, the Taliban have drawn sufferings on Afghan people, therefore they are responsible for everything what is happening there. It was also noticed, the process of change military actions to political dialogue should be accelerated. The participants of the meeting expressed their assurance that the political process must be aimed at creating a broadly representative government including representatives of all nations and ethnic groups of Afghanistan and formed as a result of free will. The leaders negatively considered the Taliban’s participation in future Afghan government. Vladimir Putin said while expressing the joint opinion “We suppose the Taliben has compromised itself by its cooperation with international terrorism.” According to Putin, Russian policy’s aim is to create such a situation in Afghanistan when Afghan people could independently define their fate and could have a government and a state friendly towards the Russian Federation. Vladimir Putin stressed questions of Afghanistan’s future had been discussed in the meeting in detail. This meeting must have taken place anyway. Moscow must have discussed its plan of the future Afghanistan with its allies. The Northern Alliance expecting military support at the beginning of the operation, after some statements of the Department of State had lost interest in US support. Therefore Russia intensified its contacts with the Northern Alliance. In the nearest future, through the Russian Emergency Ministry, not only humanitarian aid, but also military equipment will be supplied to Afghanistan. The Chinese leader also negatively reacted to the US idea about the Taliban’s participation in the future Afghan government. This also gives Russia a good chance, which should be used.