Lagatar24 desk
Moscow, Oct 20: Russia regretted the absence of US officials from the Moscow Format Dialogue on Afghanistan, said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday.
“We deplore the fact that this time our American colleagues chose not to participate in this event. We have noticed that it is the second time when the US is evading the meeting uniting Russia, China and Pakistan. We hope that it has nothing to do with problems and perhaps none of the reasons is the fact that the special representative of the US in Afghanistan recently was replaced and we hope that they are in readiness to work on Afghanistan remains”, said Lavrov.
Notably, representatives of 10 countries including India and a high level Taliban delegation are taking part in this Moscow-format meeting on Afghanistan. This Moscow Format was introduced in 2017 on the basis of the six party mechanism for consultations between special representatives from Russia, Afghanistan, Pakistan ,China, Iran and India. Meanwhile, the United States had said yesterday that it will not be participating in talks on Afghanistan hosted by Russia. “We will not participate in the Moscow talks”, said the State Department Spokesperson Ned Price. Price said that the United States is unable to join the talks due to logistic difficulties.
