Foreign Ministers of Iran, China and Turkmenistan express “serious concern about terrorism in Afghanistan”

The Foreign Ministers of countries bordering Afghanistan including Iran, China and Turkmenistan have expressed “serious concern about terrorism in Afghanistan.”

“It was insisted that the Taliban must distance itself from this issue (terrorism) and don’t allow terrorism to take roots again in the country so that borders and border crossings remain safe and open”, media reports have said.

According to Iranian spokesman, Tehran also insisted on the need for an inclusive government in which all religious and ethnic groups are represented and international law is respected.

The meeting was attended by the foreign ministers of Iran, Pakistan, China, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. It took place one day after the Taliban announced an interim cabinet.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said the main agenda of the meeting was how to contribute to the fulfillment of the will of all Afghans and the achievement of peace in the country.

Iranian Minister Abdollahian told the virtual summit “that we should use all the potentials and capacities of all Afghanistan’s leaders and people, and that neighboring countries should also help materialize peace in Afghanistan.” 

Abdollahian also said that military intervention and foreign interference is “a repetition of errors that have happened several times in the current history of Afghanistan". 

Roya Rahmani, Afghanistan's first female ambassador to the United States who left her post in July, is clearly horrified by the Taliban takeover of her country. But she is not surprised, reports Reuters.

In an interview, Rahmani accused the former US-backed government in Kabul of a failure to lead the country and of widespread corruption that ultimately paved the way for the Taliban's victory last month.

She also warned the United States, still smarting from its defeat, that the rise of the Afghan Taliban would have far-reaching geopolitical consequences.

"I, as an Afghan, was not surprised by the fact that the Taliban took over Afghanistan the way they did and how quickly they did, partly because of the lack of leadership by the Afghan government that was in place at the time," Rahmani said.

"It was not the Afghan forces, that they were not willing to fight for their freedom and for protection of their people. It was the leadership that was corrupt. And they handed over, basically, the country to the Taliban," she said, without providing specific allegations.

In particular, Ashraf Ghani's decision to abandon the presidency and leave Afghanistan on August 15 was "extremely disappointing and embarrassing", she said.