KABUL: Top Russian security official Sergei Shoigu visited Afghan government officials on Monday, assuring them Moscow will soon remove the Taliban from its list of banned organizations, Kabul said.
\nSince the Taliban surged back to power in 2021 visits by foreign officials have been infrequent because no nation has yet formally recognized the government of the former insurgent group.
\nTaliban government curbs on women have made them pariahs in many Western nations but Kabul is making increasing diplomatic overtures to its regional neighbors, emphasising economic and security cooperation.
\nShoigu, the secretary of Russia\u2019s Security Council, met an Afghan cohort in Kabul headed by Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Abdul Ghani Baradar.
\nHe \u201cexpressed Russia\u2019s interest in increasing the level of bilateral cooperation with Afghanistan,\u201d Baradar\u2019s office said in a statement released on social media site X.
\n\u201cHe also announced that, to expand political and economic relations between the two countries, the Islamic Emirate\u2019s name would soon be removed from Russia\u2019s blacklist.\u201d
\nThe Islamic Emirate is the name the Taliban government uses to refer to itself.
\nRussian news agencies quoted Shoigu as saying he wanted \u201cconstructive\u201d ties with Kabul, without saying if he had floated Moscow removing the Taliban from its list of banned groups.
\n\u201cI confirm the readiness to build a constructive political dialogue between our countries, including in order to give momentum to the process of the internal Afghan settlement,\u201d Shoigu said, according to the RIA Novosti news agency.
\nHe also said Russian companies plan to take part in projects in Afghanistan on extracting natural resources.
\nAnalysts say Moscow may be eying cooperation with Kabul to counter the threat from Islamic State Khorasan (IS-K) \u2014 the Afghan-based branch of the Sunni militant group.
\nIn March, more than 140 people were killed when IS-K gunmen attacked a Moscow concert hall.
\nTaliban authorities have repeatedly said security is their top domestic priority and have pledged militants staging foreign attacks will be ousted from Afghanistan.
\n\u201cThe Taliban certainly are our allies in the fight against terrorism,\u201d Russia\u2019s ambassador to Afghanistan, Dmitry Zhirnov, said in July.
\n\u201cThey are working to eradicate terrorist cells.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KABUL: Top Russian security official Sergei Shoigu visited Afghan government officials on Monday, assuring them Moscow will soon remove the Taliban from its list of banned organizations, Kabul said. Since the Taliban surged back to power in 2021 visits by foreign officials have been infrequent because no nation has yet formally recognized the government of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":73371,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73352"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73372,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73352\/revisions\/73372"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}