Russia has said that the reason for not inviting the Taliban representative to the Moscow meeting is the group’s failure of forming an “all-inclusive political-ethnic” government.
Zamir Kabulov, the special representative of the Russian President for Afghanistan, said on Wednesday, November 16, in his opening speech at this meeting, that the Taliban have not fulfilled their commitment to form an all-inclusive government.
According to him, in the previous meeting in Moscow, the representative of the Taliban pledged to “take practical measures to form an inclusive ethnic-political government, but unfortunately this has not happened.”
He further said: “For this reason, we decided to invite only other countries of the region to this meeting to create a common approach within the framework of the format.”
The fourth consultative meeting called “Moscow Format” on Afghanistan was held today in Moscow with the participation of representatives of 10 countries of the region, but the representative of Taliban was not present.
Earlier, the Russian Foreign Minister had said that the reason for not inviting this group was “Taliban’s failure to establish a comprehensive government in Afghanistan and failure to fulfill its obligations in the field of human rights”.
On the other hand, Zamir Kabulov said in this meeting that Moscow is especially worried about the influence of ISIS in northern Afghanistan.
In reaction to Moscow’s decision on not inviting the Taliban representative, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Taliban had expressed dissatisfaction and said that without the participation of Taliban representatives, this meeting is “incomplete” and not inviting their representatives “could have negative effects on the interactions.”
Meanwhile, Indian media have reported that Russia, India and Iran, who have common concerns about Afghanistan, are holding a tripartite meeting on Afghanistan on the sidelines of the Moscow meeting.
