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UN urged to push for talks between factions in Afghanistan |
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September 28, 2000
MOSCOW (AP) - Russia's foreign minister on Wednesday urged the United Nations to push for talks between warring factions in Afghanistan, saying there was no military solution to the conflict. Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said that the fighting in Afghanistan threatened to destabilize the former Soviet republics in Central Asia, particularly as battles have approached Afghanistan's border with Tajikistan in recent days. Russia is trying to "contain the further growth of tension in Afghanistan and not allow the conflict to spread beyond the limits of that country's borders," the Interfax news agency quoted Ivanov as saying. The Taliban, who follow a harsh version of Islamic law, now control about 95 percent of Afghanistan and have won several victories recently over the opposition in the north. Russia has about 25,000 troops in Tajikistan to guard the border and has put them on alert, reinforcing checkpoints and patrols and conducting military exercises. Ivanov criticized the Taliban, which have accused Moscow of giving military aid to the opposition. Central Asian leaders have also demanded that the United Nations do more to encourage a peaceful solution. Uzbek President Islam Karimov said Wednesday that the United Nations wasn't paying enough attention to problems in Central Asia, Interfax reported. "Unfortunately, the U.N. Security Council carefully follows the situation in Bosnia and Kosovo, but isn't taking any other actions in Afghanistan, except for sanctions that don't frighten anyone," Karimov said, referring to other hot spots where the United Nations has deployed peacekeepers. The United Nations has tried to persuade the Taliban and the opposition to enter negotiations, but has had little success. It has also accused other countries of paying only lip service to the idea of talks. Meanwhile, the Taliban's representative to the United Nations, Abdul Hakim Mujahid, said Moscow should pay compensation for the Soviet Union's decade-long occupation of Afghanistan. "The USSR called itself a friend of Afghanistan, and then killed 1.5 million of our people," Mujahid told Russia's Novye Izvestia daily in an interview in New York. Soviet troops entered Afghanistan in late 1979, and were pulled out by then-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in February, 1989. Some 15,000 Russian servicemen and hundreds of thousands of Afghanis were killed in the war. Mujahid also denied Russia's accusations that the Taliban is aiding rebels in breakaway Chechnya. |