India on Tuesday joined the Taliban regime, Pakistan, China and Russia to oppose United States President Donald Trump’s attempt to re-establish control over the Bagram air base in Afghanistan.
A joint statement issued after the seventh meeting of the Moscow Format consultations said that the participants “called unacceptable the attempts by countries to deploy their military infrastructure in Afghanistan and neighbouring states, since this does not serve the interests of regional peace and stability”.
The joint statement did not mention Bagram explicitly.
The Moscow Format is a regional diplomatic forum set up in 2017 to establish dialogue among Afghanistan’s neighbours and other major stakeholders. The platform mainly works on promoting peace and development in Afghanistan.
The meeting on Tuesday in Moscow was attended by special representatives and senior officials from Afghanistan, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, The Indian Express reported. A delegation from Belarus also participated as guests.
The statement came just days before the scheduled visit of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan’s Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi to India later this week.
The Bagram air base, located about 50 km north of Kabul, is Afghanistan’s largest airfield and was a key centre of operations for the United States during its two-decade-long military presence in the country.
The Soviet-era airfield has a 3.5-km runway capable of serving bomber and large cargo aircraft.
It has remained under Taliban control since the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.
Last month, Trump said that Washington was seeking to regain control of the base, claiming his administration was in talks with Afghanistan’s Taliban government.
“We want it back, and we want it back soon, right away,” Trump told reporters on September 20.
The next day, the Taliban government rejected Trump’s demand.
|
