Agreement could not be reached

Failed to reach agreement

As we have already written, on October 5, Moscow hosted the 8th meeting of the Moscow Format of consultations on Afghanistan, with the participation of representatives from Russia, Afghanistan, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported that the participants reaffirmed their commitment to developing equal cooperation with Kabul and integrating Afghanistan into international economic relations. However, the participants failed to draft a joint final statement.

Zamir Kabulov, the Special Representative of the President of the Russian Federation for Afghanistan, stated that the reason was disagreements between the Afghan and Pakistani delegations. According to him, the Afghan side objected to formulations in which Afghanistan appeared too frequently in the context of terrorism.

At the same time, the Russian representative emphasized that the absence of a joint statement does not mean the end of the Moscow Format. According to him, this platform was created primarily to coordinate regional cooperation, rather than to resolve bilateral contradictions between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Kabulov confirmed that consultations within the format will continue.

In turn, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, commenting on the refusal of representatives from Kabul and Islamabad to sign the joint statement following the Moscow Format on Afghanistan, called the incident unpleasant but not unexpected. "This is not a very pleasant event, but I would not make a tragedy out of it, because there were reasons to foresee such a development of events," said the head of Russian diplomacy.

Sergey Lavrov also named the reasons that prevented the adoption of the final document.

"After all, there is currently a rather serious confrontation between Afghanistan and Pakistan due to the fact that there is the 'Islamic State', which has a branch, calls this branch Pakistani, but which causes problems and carries out terrorist raids both on the territory of Afghanistan and on Pakistani territory," the Russian Foreign Minister said.

As S. Lavrov noted, "the main conclusion that should be drawn from this situation is that all interference by extra-regional countries in the affairs of this geopolitical space must stop."

"'Islamic State' as a terrorist structure emerged after the illegal aggression of the United States against Iraq. That is where the roots of this structure grow from. Later, it began to acquire affiliated organizations in other parts of the world," Lavrov said, as quoted by TASS.

In this regard, he added that "in exactly the same way, after the invasion of Libya, additional terrorist groups appeared."