- publish: 14 September 2016
- time: 5:04 pm
- category: Politics
- No: 4423
Quadrilateral Cooperation Group efforts end in failure: Russian Kabulov
The four-party Afghan talks format (USA, China, Afghanistan, Pakistan) proved a failure, the Russian President’s Special Envoy for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov said.
“We have talked about it, with the US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Olson. The participants in the process are eager to save face and say they will revive it, but I think that they are just putting up a smoke screen,” Kabulov said, TASS reported.
“They understand very well that this process is doomed to failure.”
“To tell the truth, we didn’t see this as promising from the very beginning so everything has turned out as we expected”, Russian diplomat added.
The four-way talks on Afghanistan were aimed at producing a road map for negotiations between Afghan authorities and the Taliban. The format was established at the Heart of Asia conference held in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad in December 2015.
According to Kabulov, resolving the conflict in Afghanistan without Iran’s participation in the process is impossible.
“The US doesn’t seem to succeed in excluding Iran from solving regionals issues, although they very much want to. But the reality is different”, Kabulov added.