India and other participants in the Afghanistan conference run by Russia have asked the Taliban in Kabul to dismantle terrorist organisations operating there and keep Afghanistan from becoming a “hotspot for terrorism and instability.”
The Taliban administration has made no progress in creating a “truly inclusive government” that represents the interests of all ethno-political groups in the nation, according to the Kazan Declaration, which was released on Friday at the end of the Moscow Format discussions on Afghanistan.
Pavan Kapoor, India’s ambassador to Russia in Moscow, attended the negotiations that were place in Kazan. In order to encourage national reconciliation in Afghanistan, the Moscow Format was founded in 2017. Other forum members include Russia, Iran, China, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
The Kazan Declaration bluntly stated their areas of concern on Taliban to “take effective measures to dismantle, eliminate and prevent placement of all sorts of terrorist groups based in Afghanistan and to prevent the country from being the terrorism and instability hotspot and spreading to the regional states”.
The declaration repents that “there had been no progress in forming a truly inclusive government in Afghanistan, reflecting the interests of all ethno-political groups”. It added: “Despite the appointment of some individual representatives of various Afghan ethnicities to the Kabul administration, the parties observed no political pluralism in it.”
The forum again stressed on the need to “establish a practical, outcome-oriented dialogue with the representatives of alternative ethno-political groups with a view to completing the process of peaceful settlement and forging a balanced, more broad-based, inclusive, accountable and responsible government” in Kabul.
Members of the Moscow Format also called on the Taliban to increase cooperation with regional countries to fight both terrorism and drug-trafficking emanating from Afghan territory. “Most participants stressed their opposition to the support for terrorism in Afghanistan by external forces,” the declaration read.
The nations stressed the need of upholding Afghanistan’s fundamental freedoms and rights, particularly equality rights to labour, education, and justice without distinction on the basis of gender, ethnicity, or religion. They emphasised their worry about the Taliban’s limitations on women’s work and girls’ education and encouraged the organisation to support modern education in classrooms.
The “acting foreign minister” of the Taliban, Amir Khan Muttaqi, was present at the conference. Observers from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates were present during the meetings.
