Afghan leader to visit Russia for aid talks

By Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW, JUNE 30. The Acting Foreign Minister of the Afghan opposition government, Dr. Abdulla, will visit Russia on July 3 and July 4 to discuss new aid to the Northern Alliance forces as Moscow is trying to expand the anti-Taliban coalition and build up international pressure to rein in the Taliban.

The visit comes on the heels of a series of consultations on Afghanistan that Russia has conducted with India, the United States, China and Central Asian States. ``It is necessary to force the Taliban through concerted efforts to renounce attempts to resolve the Afghan problem by force, to strictly respect fundamental human rights, including the rights of women, national and religious minorities, to stop the destruction of cultural and historical monuments which are part of the mankind's heritage,'' the spokesman of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Mr. Alexander Yakovenko, said, commenting on Dr. Abdulla's visit.

Russia has been instrumental in forging a broader anti-Taliban coalition in Afghanistan, saying the Taliban posed a direct threat to Russian security. ``A number of field commanders who recently returned to Afghanistan have joined the fighting on the side of the opposition front,'' the First Deputy Foreign Minister, Mr. Vyacheslav Trubnikov, Russia's chief international co-ordinator for Afghanistan, said in an interview last week, citing increased opposition activity in Bamiam, Herat, Nangarhar, Balh and other Afghan provinces.

``The threats emanating from the Taliban are destabilising the situation in the Central Asian region, which is threatening Russia's immediate interests,'' Mr. Trubnikov said. Simultaneously, Moscow has been urging more vigorous international action to force the Taliban to the negotiating table to discuss a coalition government.

Russia favours ``broad-based international interaction in the framework of the U.N., the CIS Collective Security Treaty, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and other multilateral and bilateral formats'' to neutralise the threats emanating from Afghanistan, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mr. Yakovenko, said.

Over the past month Russia, India and the United States in bilateral consultations have worked out joint proposals for international monitoring to force Pakistan to comply with the U.N. Security Council embargo on arms supplies to the Taliban.

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Section  : International
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