Afghanistan Times
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AT Monitoring Desk
KABUL: The north of Afghanistan might transform into a new springboard for international terrorist organizations, and so the country needs help from abroad to prevent the threats, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday in his address to the United Nations Security Council, TASS reported.
“Both the CSTO [the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a military bloc of post-Soviet republics] and the SCO [the Shanghai Cooperation Organization] have focused their attention on the threats coming from Afghanistan. Among them are threats for Central Asia. The north of Afghanistan risks becoming a new springboard for IS-led international terrorist organizations [IS, an abbreviation for the Islamic State terror group, which is banned in Russia – TASS],” Lavrov said.
“Certainly, it requires relevant external assistance to Afghanistan in order to overcome those threats and challenges,” he added.
The Russian foreign minister pointed out that the experience gained in recent years has convincingly proved that no plans on development of Central Asia’s economic cooperation with Afghanistan could not be implemented without an appropriate response to the threats coming from that state.
“In this context, I would like to point out that this reality is the foundation for work of the SCO-Afghanistan contact group, which is implementing the road map, approved this year, for the development of cooperation between the SCO members and Kabul,” he said.
