Afghanistan Times
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AT Monitoring Desk-KABUL: The US State Department Spokesman, John Kirby welcomed a meeting between Russia, China and Pakistan on Afghanistan held on Moscow last week.
“What we welcome is any international effort to help Afghanistan become secure and more prosperous, and we continue to support, as we always have, an Afghan reconciliation process,” Kirby said.
The US officials “remain steadfast” in their support for an Afghan government led by President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, he said.
“But nation-states and Afghanistan as a nation-state has every right and every responsibility, quite frankly, for the betterment of their own people to have, whether it’s multilateral or bilateral discussions with neighboring nations and nations that aren’t neighboring that are interested in the same goals that we are” he added.
This comes as Afghan officials have reacted with dismay to a trilateral meeting in Moscow involving China, Pakistan and Russia to discuss Afghanistan.
Spokesman for the Afghan Foreign Ministry, Ahmad Shekib Mostaghani had earlier said that the government was not optimistic about the outcome of the meeting.
“Such meeting without the presence of Afghan officials will not represent a real picture of the situation of Afghanistan in the meeting,” the spokesman said.
Prior to that, members of the Wolesi Jirga (Lower House) of parliament strongly condemned the trilateral meeting over Afghanistan situation with the presence of representatives from Pakistan, Russia and China in Moscow while nobody was invited from Afghanistan.
The lawmakers asked the government to take action against Moscow and address the issue through diplomacy channels.
