FM: Russia cannot recognise Taliban until they set up inclusive government

Building a dialogue with the Taliban government in Afghanistan has no alternative and is in the interests of the region, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

He said that Russia cannot start talking about recognising the Taliban until they fulfil their obligations to establish an inclusive government, Kommersant.

Lavrov raised the topic during a speech at the Russian-Tajik (Slavonic) University in Dushanbe.

The minister on June 6 with his Tajik counterpart Sirodjiddin Muhriddin and Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon. Muhriddin said after the talks that Moscow and Dushanbe are united in their assessments of threats emanating from Afghanistan.

"We have discussed regional security issues with a focus on the situation in Afghanistan. We agreed on assessing the challenges and threats to security posed by the growing number of various terrorist groups in Afghanistan's north-eastern provinces," the Tajik foreign minister said.

Speaking at the university, Sergey Lavrov said that building a working dialogue with the Taliban "meets the interests of security and economic development of the region, as well as the goals of inter-Afghan national reconciliation.

"However, until the aforementioned conditions are met, we cannot talk about starting the process of officially recognising the government of the Taliban movement. As I said, these commitments included the formation of an ethnopolitically balanced government, stepping up measures to combat terrorism and drug trafficking, and ensuring the basic human rights of all peoples living in Afghanistan, including the Tajiks," the minister added.

The Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021.