Afghanistan

Taliban splinter faction says Moscow meeting ‘was a lie’

IMAGE COURTESY: TOLONEWS

The Taliban’s splinter faction, led by Mullah Abdul Manan Niazi, said Sunday that the recent Moscow meeting on peace in Afghanistan was a “lie”, TOLONews reported.

However, Afghanistan High Peace Council (HPC)’s officials said Friday’s Moscow meeting was an important platform towards building peace in Afghanistan and that the peace facilitating body is optimistic about starting direct talks with the Taliban.

The Afghan High Peace Council is a government-appointed body tasked to talk to Taliban on the reconciliation process.

Niazi said, “Moscow meeting is nothing except a lie like other meetings held by the Afghan government, they only deceive the poor and the oppressed people.”

“This delegation (HPC delegation) rushed to the discussions without any information; the HPC finalized its decision to participate only two days before the conference; this delegation was not fully prepared to attend the meeting,” said political analyst Nasrallah Stanekzai, as reported by TN.

According to the report, the peace council had only decided to attend the meeting two days before the summit.

“The delegation which attended the meeting was very weak; the Taliban described Afghanistan at the summit as an invaded country, but the delegation were not able to react,” said one politician Najibullah Kabuli, as cited by TN.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s Meshrano Jirga (lower house of parliament)’s members accused Russia of exploiting the Moscow summit for its own benefit, the report said.

They said that Russia by holding such a meeting wants to legitimize its secret ties with the Taliban.

“The Afghan government should play its own political and diplomatic roles at such meetings,” said a senator Gul Ahmad Aazami.

On Friday, in opening remarks, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had said, “No one should think in terms of geopolitical games that may result in another transformation of Afghanistan into a field for competition between external players with drastic consequences both for the Afghans and their neighbours.”

The Ministry of External Affairs’ official spokesperson Raveesh Kumar, in response to suggestions that India was talking to Taliban, HAD said: “Where did we say that there will be talks with Taliban? We did not say that India will talk to Taliban.”

“Taliban appeared in this meeting from a powerful position, but the Afghan delegation appeared in a very weak and vague position,” said senator Ghairat Baheer Sunday.

“We saw weakness from the delegation in this meeting,” said senator Farhad Sakhi, as per the report.

Apart from India, the Moscow meeting Friday was attended by representatives from the US, Pakistan, China, Iran and some Central Asian countries.

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