Translated material
At the Afghan table
In Moscow, the United States will meet with Iran, and NATO with the CSTO
Tomorrow the International Conference on Afghanistan will be held in Moscow at the President Hotel under the auspices of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The idea of holding it was first put forward in 2007 at the SCO summit in Bishkek by then Russian President Vladimir Putin. At last year's SCO summit in Dushanbe, President Medvedev confirmed this proposal, after which practical work began on preparing the conference.The organizers believe that the Moscow meeting will help coordinate efforts to resolve the situation in and around Afghanistan, which are being undertaken both at the global and regional levels. The list of participants at tomorrow's conference looks impressive. In addition to representatives of the SCO member countries - Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan (Tashkent’s participation is still in question), as well as a regular guest of all “Shanghai” summits - Afghanistan, high-ranking officials from observer countries are expected in Moscow SCO - Pakistan, Iran, India and Mongolia. Envoys from Afghanistan's neighbor Turkmenistan, Turkey, which is influential in the region, as well as the G8 states - Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Canada, the USA, France and Japan - are expected. Russia, Afghanistan, Türkiye, Pakistan, and Kyrgyzstan will be represented at the level of foreign ministers.
No less impressive is the list of 15 international organizations and their leaders that will be represented at the round table at the President Hotel. In addition to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, four more secretaries general are expected in Moscow - the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (Marc Perrin de Brichambaud), the Organization of the Islamic Conference (Ekmelledin Ihsanoglu), the Collective Security Treaty Organization (Nikolai Bordyuzha) and the SCO itself (Bulat Nurgaliev). The CIS will be represented by Executive Secretary Sergei Lebedev, NATO by Deputy Secretary General Martin Howard, and the EU by EU Commission Ambassador to Russia Mark Franco. The director of CARICC - the Central Asian Regional Information Coordination Center for Combating Drug Production, as well as the head of the regional UN Center for Preventive Diplomacy in Ashgabat, Miroslav Jenca, will take part in the conference.
Yesterday, two days before the start of the conference, no confirmation of Uzbekistan’s participation in it was received from Tashkent. As Vremya Novostey was told in the Russian Foreign Ministry, they are ready to wait for the Uzbek representative until the start of tomorrow’s meeting. From diplomatic sources in Central Asia, VN learned that Tashkent’s refusal may be due to its disappointment with the lack of attention from SCO partners to the Uzbek initiative to resume the activities of the so-called Contact Group of Friends and Neighbors of Afghanistan under the “6+2” formula, ( USA, Russia, Iran, China, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan), operating in 1997-2001.
A year ago, President of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov proposed to revive the work of the group, transforming it into “6+3”, adding a NATO representative. The skepticism towards this initiative is primarily due to the absence of a representative of the legitimate government of Afghanistan in the group. In the late 1990s, the international community did not recognize the Taliban government in Kabul, so there was no Afghan representative in the contact group at that time. Nevertheless, some experts believe that in the future the idea of Tashkent may be in demand by the Americans if they need a formula for an Afghan settlement on an interethnic basis. We must not forget that virtually each of the states neighboring Afghanistan has a community there that is ethnically or religiously related to it...
It is expected that the final documents of the Moscow conference will be a joint Statement of the SCO member countries, a Declaration and a Unified Action Plan on the fight against terrorism, drug trafficking and organized cross-border crime. The latter presents a detailed six-page development of activities, including holding meetings of heads of anti-drug agencies, training personnel for police, customs, border and other intelligence services - including for Afghanistan.
For the first time, the leaders of NATO and the CSTO will sit at the same round table in Moscow. CSTO Secretary General General Nikolai Bordyuzha has been dreaming about this for many years. He never tires of hoping that the alliance recognizes the organization as an equal partner in the CSTO area of responsibility.
Of even greater interest are possible diplomatic contacts on the sidelines of the conference between the United States and Iran. Washington will be represented by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Patrick Moon, and Tehran will be represented by Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Sheikh al-Islam. “We don’t yet have any specific plans for a meeting with a representative of Tehran, so I’m not confirming anything and I’m not ruling anything out. We’ll see what happens,” US State Department spokesman Robert Wood said recently. A very unusual diplomatic contact in recent years between the heads of the Foreign Ministries of Pakistan and Afghanistan is also possible.
According to VN, the conditions under which Japan agreed to participate in the conference looked very specific. Tokyo made it clear that “no requests for financial assistance to Afghanistan should be made in Moscow” - after all, previously provided assistance, including that allocated at the Paris meeting of donor countries in the summer of 2008, has not yet been fully utilized. These countries expect the Afghan government to develop a transparent system for the distribution and use of sponsorship assistance.
Just four days later -- on March 31 -- some of the Moscow conference participants will meet in The Hague for another conference on Afghanistan. It was initiated by the United States and will be held under the auspices of the UN. Russian diplomats insist that they are “not jealous at all,” on the contrary, the event in The Hague “only confirms the correctness of our approach” to the Afghan settlement: Russia insists that this is only possible as a result of global efforts, and not unilateral actions. The hasty holding of the Hague meeting (it was decided to convene only at the end of February) in Moscow is explained by calendar reasons. A couple of days after The Hague, the anniversary 60th NATO summit will take place in Strasbourg and Kehl, at which a new action plan in Afghanistan will be approved. Not to accept the proposals developed in Moscow as its basis - so, they say, representatives of the West decided to urgently gather side by side in The Hague so that they would have something to refer to during the anniversary...